[Music]
okay good afternoon everyone welcome to
the work session of last fruit city
council today is monday march 14th 2022
it's approximately 1 pm if you please
join me in the pledge of allegiance
please
across the world
and i think jennifer is going to no amy
deflex animal services center
read our pet of the week yeah
alrighty so for our cat of the week her
name is lizzo and
and you are to amy right yes i am amy
with the animal the services center the
messiah valley yes
i am one of the adoption and rescue
coordinators
and for the pet of the week the cat of
the week is lizzo and her little
description says true to my name i'm a
perfectly fabulous diva i am capable of
existing with other cats but i still
really like to maintain my personal
bubble unless i'm getting attention from
my humans i am independent and full of
personality and would love to be the
star of your show and she is a perfect
little angel in this a really photogenic
cat she's very beautiful
and our dog of the week
keeping with the music references this
is fish
with ph ish her description is i
originally came into the shelter as a
puppy but now i've fully grown and
blossomed into my true self i am playful
and active so i love to stay busy
whether that's with walks or jogs or
with a kong filled with treats i always
want to put my mind to something maybe
fourth time is the lucky charm and you
have the perfect home for me
and if anyone happens to be interested
lizzo's animal id number is 43956 and
fishes is 33555.
thank you and amy do you have the
off the top of your head the phone
number to the animal services center yes
you can all call us
from 8 am to 5
pm
at 575-382-0018
okay great well thank you very much and
thank you for the presentation thank you
okay next is going to be the jobs of the
week and dr francisco payadas from our
deputy director of economic development
department
thank you mr mayor members of the city
council
for this week jobs of the week
we're going to start with a distribution
specialist being hired by visit las
cruces and this position is paying 18.70
and it will be closing on the 21st of
march of 2022. we also have a division
manager ahm with families and youth
incorporated and this position is paying
between 25 96 25 with 96 cents to 54.30
depending on the experience per hour and
this position will be closing the 13th
of may of 2022. we also have a project
specialist and this is with crescent
electric supply company the salary is
not disclosed for this position and this
will be closing on june the 1st of 2022
periton incorporated is also hiring a
junior level software engineer the
salary for this position is not
disclosed and this position will be
closing on march 26 of 2022 and there's
also a position available with warehouse
warehouse person with american beverages
and this position is paying 17 and 25
cents and this position will be closing
on april 3rd of 2022 and again for a
full list of the jobs of the internships
and the volunteer opportunities that are
available in our community please visit
www.employeename.com
as well as jobs dot com forward slash
careers forward slash las cruces and if
there are individuals or job seekers or
businesses that are interested in
contacting the new mexico workforce
connection the contact information is
524-6250
and they're located at 226 south alameda
boulevard in downtown las cruces thank
you mr mayor
thank you dr payadis
okay we're going to get to the agenda
items we've got three items there
before we get to the first one crisis
intervention team development we need to
put a rumor to rest ifo i know your
buddy tom brady has decided to come out
of retirement to play and there's
discussions that maybe you may actually
come out of retirement to play with your
friend so is that is that
nothing further from the truth
i wish it were true but i'm not not in a
good enough shape to do that
okay all right
so we'll take we'll take that as a no so
okay so we've got
chief smith from the fire department is
going to
be doing the presentation
good afternoon fire chief jason smith
for the record
mayor members of council thank you for
having uh las cruces fire department and
our mih team here today to present on
the progress we've made towards
implementing a crisis intervention team
today presenting will be battalion chief
cody haver as well as firefighter
paramedic
paul ford we also have our team
with us we have
mindy fowler who's a lmsw
as well as allison stoner and lmsw and
we also have an intern with us lindsay
who's working on her masters in public
health as well as social work
and then we have sergeant paul mccord
who heads up pdcit team as well as both
deputy chiefs from the fire department
justin allen and adrian adias and police
chief miguel dominguez
to present first will be paul ford
i'm not going to try to embarrass you
but have you ever heard him sing
oh he's he's like from new york city i
mean he's that that quality
can you want to sing a couple of songs
seriously i mean you are amazing
so anyways i appreciate that mayor thank
you thank you chief
mayor members of the council i am paul
ford
i am the mobile integrated health care
coordinator uh with the las cruces fire
department
we did already talk about everybody that
is here with the las cruces fire
department that were contributors but
i'll go through it really quickly we
have melinda fowler who is on our staff
she's a licensed master social worker we
have myself
we have allison stoner she's a licensed
master social worker we have cody haver
who is the
the battalion chief of community risk
reduction we have sergeant bob mccord of
the crisis intervention team of the las
cruces police department we have uh
deputy chief adrian adias um as well uh
so
so today we are here to discuss
uh the city of las cruces crisis
intervention team
uh which has been in uh discussion and
development for quite some time
the challenge placed before us lies in
the fact that the city of las cruces is
experiencing an increase in the number
of interactions with and calls for
service from people experiencing a
mental health emergency and this issue
has been increasing uh since even before
the covet 19 pandemic
the mental health emergency
that we encounter frequently strains the
community and behavioral health based
resources and unfortunately the
likelihood of this situation resolving
without innovative intervention is
unlikely
and we feel very strongly that a highly
specialized
emergent response team is needed to
lessen the incidence of grief harm and
trauma associated with these behavioral
health crises and that is what we intend
to call the crisis intervention team is
project light and it is through the
intervention of this team-based approach
in the field and the team's
collaboration with other stakeholders in
the community that we hope to reduce the
long-standing challenges in providing
de-escalation and providing care and
intervention
to those in crisis
so the crisis intervention team is
comprised of the following staff
so oversight of the team is done by a
licensed mental health coordinator that
we anticipate will be uh hold the
licensure of licensed clinical social
worker
and then there will be a two-person team
that will be in the field
doing the operations level work and that
will consist of a licensed mental health
provider that we anticipate will hold a
licensure of either a licensed
master social worker
licensed professional clinical counselor
or a licensed marriage and family
therapist and that individual will be
paired with a sworn firefighter of the
emergency medical technician level or
higher
those two teams initially we hope to
deploy in fiscal year of 2023 they will
be part of the 9-1-1 response system
that will
be dispatched to
certain
behavioral health calls and they will
operate 10 to 12-hour shifts and then we
will also retain a case manager for data
acquisition
referral tracking and follow-up with
cases that we have seen and worked with
this graph that you see before you
is an example of the times of day that
we have the most crisis calls and you
can see that
and and this is for every day but you'll
see that at approximately nine in the
morning we see an uptick in the types of
calls for service that we are looking at
and then that doesn't fall back down
until eight or nine in the evening this
data was acquired through the computer
aided dispatch system from the 911
response system
and it
it includes all 911 calls for suicidal
subject overdose
welfare checks intoxicated individuals
behavioral issues
and so when we are deciding how we are
going to deploy this model it's
important for us to look at
how can we maximize
the resources that we have and make sure
that we have personnel available to
respond at the times of day
when those calls happen most often so we
do keep that in mind
so without further hesitation
to discuss some of the further logistics
surrounding the crisis intervention team
i'd like to introduce the community risk
reduction battalion chief and fire
marshal cody haver thank you all very
much
thank you
good afternoon mayor and council city
manager and members of the city staff i
am cody haver i am the community risk
reduction battalion chief for las cruces
fire department
and at this time i'm going to take a a
little step back and we're going to just
talk a little bit about uh some of the
previous research and action items that
have been taken by city staff over the
last several months uh in preparation
for today's work session that that we
have in front of you
uh
back last year 2021 uh toward the summer
and early fall
uh city manager mr rifle pili gave
direction to fire chief smith
to work together to look at what options
are available nationwide to look at what
types of programs might be available for
a community like ours to provide mobile
behavioral crisis response
and that took a couple of different
directions where uh mr pele and and the
chief
looked nationwide at other programs
other fire departments other cities that
were providing different levels of
behavioral and mobile crisis response
and also took a look here
at our own community to see what types
of agencies and resources are available
to us to be able to use for such a
project
that led to some direction by mr pealey
to the chief to have las cruces fire
department submit a proposal of what
that might look like if if our
department were to lead a mobile crisis
response and to put together and operate
such a team for our city
after several months of work between the
chief and mr pealey and then our staff
and the police department
we were able to come up with a proposal
that we took to
the health policy review committee in
november of this last year
and the outcome of that meeting
led
the the committee members of that
meeting to suggest that we do provide a
formal recommendation for review by the
city managers staff and city council to
look at las cruces fire department
leading a behavioral
health crisis team program
that led us to further direction to
put together and provide a possible
mid-year budget adjustment request which
did go to council and was approved
just a couple of months ago and that led
us to the work session today where we
are giving you an update of what we've
done so far and the proposed timeline of
the next steps that we have in front of
us
so
the fiscal year 22 mid-year budget
adjustment that was approved included a
few items the first that you'll see in
front of you is salary and benefits for
a few months of the mental health
coordinator position again this is
looking at somebody at the license level
licensed social licensed clinical social
worker or similar
and our goal here is to hire that person
very soon so that we can finish out this
fiscal year by beginning to put together
the program and look at policies and
protocols of how we will hire the next
staff and how we will begin to operate
the team
we were also
approved 360 thousand dollars to
purchase vehicles response vehicles that
would be capable of transport to
transport these uh clients that we will
see to various agencies or various
facilities around our community
including in that also is uh cardiac
monitors 150 000 those are uh basically
the the similar type of equipment that
we use on our paramedic level engines so
that we can do
medical evaluation on scene to help
these clients hopefully go through the
medical process much faster so we can
get them to the behavioral health that
they really need
and then
9 500 for supplies and a thousand
dollars for training for this last
couple of months of this fiscal year
leading up into fiscal year 23.
so what you see in front of you here on
the picture i put so that you can just
get an idea a sense of what this team in
this response would look like
these are type 2 ambulances
we have purchased one and this that you
see in front of you is already delivered
here in our possession and these are the
vehicles that our team will be
responding in these are if you want to
look at it as kind of a light ambulance
you've probably seen something similar
around town but we're going to do a
little bit of retrofitting to make this
more of a
mobile clinic if you will that still has
the capability of doing non-emergency
roof transport and also emergency
transport if needed it will be
supplied with a gurney in the back and
also ems equipment that the firefighter
emt can use but it will also be
retrofitted in the in the future for
capabilities of doing telehealth video
conferencing and those types of things
some updated technology in these we have
purchased two three more of these that
are are on the way and two of those are
for the mobile crisis response team
we've also submitted the
position analysis questionnaires to
human resources
for all these positions the mental
health coordinator the mental health
providers the two firefighter emts and
also the case manager position
those paqs have been submitted to hr and
they are in works right now for some
final review and hopefully approval very
soon
and we've also submitted our
budget request for fiscal year 23.
that's already gone through level three
approval through the fire chief and is
now at the finance director and city
manager's office for a final review and
hopefully approval in the near future
so i'd just like to give you a little
bit of our projected timeline right now
give you more of a realistic sense of
where we're at and what the next steps
are and where that will lead us to
hopefully
prepare to deploy these teams in
december or january
so in may 22
which is just a couple of months from
now a few weeks from now uh by that time
we were hoping that the
position control numbers and the job
descriptions for all of our positions
will be available and ready through
human resources so that we can begin to
hire and onboard our selected
coordinator position that higher level
clinical supervisor
we would like to have that complete by
may so that we have three
two months left in the fiscal year that
we can begin to provide high level
training to that
coordinator and also begin to look at
policy and protocol development
with our internal staff the fire chief
and surrounding agencies
that leads us into the very next month
june
we would like to have the hiring process
for our mental health providers that
would be at that that licensed master
social worker or similar level and also
our case manager and by that time we
will have identified the internal
firefighters from las cruces fire
department that will be selected to fill
those cit
emt positions and in july of 22
which is again just a few months away we
will be looking to hire and onboard
at that time the mental health providers
and the case manager so that we actually
have them on staff through the new
employee process and ready to begin
training in july
once we have our staff hired and
onboarded here with us in our department
that will lead us into
the late summer and the rest of the fall
where we will be looking to meet with
stakeholders regularly around town
multiple agencies
multiple
facility directors around town
our
medical director
and we will be looking to develop
procedures policies agreements to allow
us to be able to effectively respond
into the community and quickly get these
folks to the care that they need using
the resources that are available to us
around the community
we will be providing ongoing training
to the coordinator and all staff
we have several training items that
we've already laid out that we believe
will be important for these positions
that we can answer more questions about
in just a little while and then we'll
begin to do data collection and looking
at the types of calls that we anticipate
we will be responding to
beginning to coordinate
the times that we believe we will be on
scene and looking to see how we can most
effectively move from one client to the
next so that we can see several clients
a day and meet the objectives of the
team
and with all of that in place if
everything goes well with no major
obstacles we are looking to late
december or early january of 23 to
deploy light 1 and light 2 into the
community for las cruces residents and
of course at that time we will begin a
real world real-time collection of data
regarding our responses the clients that
we are seeing
to look at the effectiveness time on
task time on scene uh the time of
turnover of those clients to the next
facility that they're going to go to and
then in coordination with our medical
director the fire chief and the clinical
supervisor position we'll be looking at
providing quality assurance and quality
improvement
and looking at improving care of all
these clients so we will be doing
very often full reviews of all the
responses the case notes that go with
those and providing ongoing training to
the staff to make sure that we're again
meeting the objectives of the program
and also answering any questions or
making changes incrementally so that we
can provide better response into the
future
and all of those items together uh lead
to what our overall strategic role in
this uh plan is and what the project is
supposed to do is to meet the
the goals and the strategic objectives
of the city and the fire department and
and we have done that this uh program
will meet uh several of our issue
statements and results for the las
cruces fire department's strategic
business plan as well as the city of las
cruces strategic plan and elevate las
cruces and finally
we believe that this program just like
many other programs around the nation
that have been built up like this will
effectively
meet the objectives of the institute for
health care improvements triple aim
which is to better the health of the
population of the united states to
provide a better patient care experience
to those people that
need the health care system and then
also looking to lower overall costs of
the community's health care system by
providing more effective
and more focused response for these
individuals
i want to thank all of you for all of
the time and effort that you have put
into our fire department police
department in this program
and the mobile integrated healthcare
program this this has been several years
in the making uh there's been a lot of
help by leadership of the city and the
fire department uh that have led us to
what i believe is going to be a very
effective program in a very near time
for the city of las cruces so again i
just want to thank you all for today and
we are ready to stand for any questions
that you may have the team behind me and
the fire chief
well thank you very much uh battalion
chief a question from mayor putin thank
you mayor thank you battalion chief
haner chief smith
paul and staff thank you so much this
has been i know long um coming all the
work that you all have done i'm
incredibly grateful i think our
community is in desperate need of
something like this
i think it as as we meet in our public
safety select committee hearing sort of
some of the issues and concerns um how
we're linking and referring now to
our triage center i think this is just
going to be just an additional service
that will really help our our folks um
and and and mitigate you know police
having to
um
you know um respond to some of these
cases i i think is going to be um a
tremendous help for for them so my
questions are along the lines of
um training
i i didn't see very much about the
training or maybe i missed it i'm sorry
about that if i did um could you talk to
me about the the training that you have
or the training modules i think that
will be really important for this group
sure absolutely what i'd like to do
mayor and council is invite allison
stoner and mindy fowler up with me
they have put a lot of effort in with
their with their background and their
licensure into helping us understand
what would be needed for training and so
i'd like to bring them up and allow them
to go through some of those trainings in
more depth and explain those to you if
that's okay thank you of course
welcome
we just need you to state your name
please
good afternoon everyone my name is
alison stoner i'm a licensed master
social worker
sorry good afternoon i'm mindy fowler
and i'm a licensed master social worker
those music to my ears yes from one
social worker to another yes thank you
so much thank you yeah this is a very um
exciting opportunity to be involved with
the fire department at this time and to
be involved in this program development
we do anticipate and have kind of a
curriculum planned already for training
and we do anticipate that some of that
will be you know non-negotiable
and trainings that we would like to have
implemented for our teams before they
are deployed
and that would include a crisis
intervention class specifically for
firefighters and or first responders
and we anticipate that this would be
provided by the public safety psychology
group in albuquerque
we also would
anticipate that the question persuade
refer or qpr training will be
implemented before these teams are
deployed
and we would use the
las cruces suicide prevention task force
for this training
motivational interviewing
we have worked with a wonderful
organization called cerna solutions
already for many
of the firefighters who are involved in
the mobile integrated health care
program of the las cruces fire
department and we would consider this a
very integral
training for our teams as well
some form of verbal de-escalation
training we we did look at a training
also through the public safety
psychology group in albuquerque
and that would be
some focus with working with folks with
any sort of mental illness
focus on destigmatizing language
active listening skills and things of
that nature
we would also
implement a trauma-informed care
training this is something that both
mindy and i have experience with having
gone through the masters of social work
program at nmsu we have partners at nmsu
who would be able to implement this type
of training as well
and lastly our sort of non-negotiable
training would be
just things to do in-house and that
would include radio training
trainings regarding the dsm-5 the
diagnostic and statistics manual that
social workers really utilize and rely
on when working with folks with mental
and behavioral illnesses
and then we also would anticipate some
coordinate coordinator-specific
trainings as cody mentioned
one that we are looking at is
implemented by cit international and
they actually license um and provide
basically a certification for
coordinators specific to crisis
intervention
now the cit international is that out of
utah is that the one
i
honestly i don't know exactly where they
are based i know that they have um
they do like a yearly conference yeah um
and i know that the conference is held
this year in philadelphia i don't know
if they where exactly they are based out
of okay yeah i know there's a
certification program that you get and
and i think i'm
really interested in in something like
that that
and if i have i have a number of people
who have sent me information i'll be
sure to send it over to mr pealey so he
can forward that on
but i'm i'm excited i think you're right
spot on in terms of the necessary
training for for
your staff i think all that is going to
be important the more we can be trauma
informed and how we address these
situations i think the better off that
we will be so thank you so much again um
for all the work that you've done i'm
really excited music to my ears thank
you and then lastly the the budget that
um i think battalion chief i know you
spoke of in regards to that third level
it's the 500 000 is that what you're
talking about that you've recommended to
mr peely and the budget committee
all right fire chief jason smith uh
mayor pro tem cundra let me go back a
few slides just to make sure we're
yes okay so this was our total mid-year
budget request that was approved in
january so bc haver and staff have made
some great strides on getting
requisitions going for our vehicles and
our cardiac monitors that comes i
believe next month
to council for approval
and then in our fiscal year 23
we have a request that will fund the
entire team for salary and benefits with
ongoing supplies and training but a lot
of the capital cost is coming out
and
we don't have it in here but i believe
next year's fiscal request was around
560 to 570 thousand
and that covers the two firefighter emt
positions the two mental health provider
positions
the oversight
and then also the case manager
so i would be the coordinator position
so when you talk about the oversight and
you spoke of um i guess an evaluation
component collecting data being able to
really understand analyze that data
what's coming your way
would you be hiring an evaluator to sort
of help put all this together and then
analyze that
data and that way you have it in the
spiffy reports and you can report back
to us
mayor pro tem uh we do not have an
assistant management analyst or
management analyst in this program we
currently have a management analyst in
the department as well as an approved
position for an assistant management
analyst that's also in the mih program
that we're i believe that pcn is being
approved through hr and already through
the city manager's office so we'll be
moving forward on that um
we're pretty fortunate and the fact that
we have battalion chief cody haver who
uh has his his masters as well and
um
very smart staff so i think with that
and with the case manager i think we
should be able to collect the data and
analyze it and provide some information
interesting points back to council thank
you no doubt that you have very smart
intelligent people with a higher
education and which is really helpful
but i know
just knowing what i know about crisis
intervention work and case management
it's it's going to be overwhelming and i
would
really think about
mr pealey
looking at hiring an evaluator and we've
been talking about it some just so that
you don't have to take that extra time
to have to do that because it can be an
overload so that would be my
recommendation it's one thing i think
that the city misses a lot of times is
that just having a completely different
different evaluation component
with an evaluator a researcher that can
really
you know understand make sense of the
data and be able to you know do pie
charts and all those really cool things
that researchers do
yeah yeah yeah
thank you thank you appreciate that
thanks mayor
we have counselors bencomo flores and
abeta
thanks mayor thank you so much um for
all of you for being here today and for
presenting i am honestly i could cry the
fact that we're here right now um i
think
um
you know i know that mih program is
already a huge undertaking for the
department and for paul
mr ford and um so i think
i just really want to express my
gratitude to you all and to everyone
who's
gotten us to this point right now
because i think project light is going
to save lives and frankly to me
additionally
important is to
improve
resident and law enforcement
relationships in our community which i
think is also a huge factor in this and
i know that has gone through many
iterations in the last couple of years
and so i just really want to thank
everyone for
all the work that has been put to get us
to this discussion right now um so thank
you all so much
i do have a couple questions
um that i'm
very excited to ask you um
in terms of since we're here actually
so this is sort of a mid-year budget
so then do you expect them to be
potentially doubled when we're talking
about a full-year budget or do you feel
like this is or did i misunderstand you
and you think this is total program
budget per year counselor ben cuomo
mayor council i can answer that so what
you see in front of you was the mid-year
budget adjustment the vehicles and the
cardiac monitors are capital purchases
basically one-time purchases that we
expect several years of life out of
the budget request that was put in for
the entire fiscal year 23 operating
budget as chief smith mentioned for
salaries and benefits and a little bit
of operating cost
that is for the entire year for two
teams to operate
plus the coordinator position plus the
case manager
assuming that
no changes were to happen from now until
about a year and a half from now we
would expect that budget to be the same
the next year
you know pending any changes in in
salary benefits those types of things
but that would
in the that 570 000 that would then
become the annual operating cost
now if there were any changes and we
were looking at adding another team or
an analyst position or something like
that then yes that would expand the
operating costs
but
really what you see in front of you here
if if we were to take out the vehicles
and the cardiac monitors and even
supplies for right now i mean really
what we'd be looking at is less than a
hundred thousand just to get the
coordinator hired for the next couple of
months does that answer your question
absolutely it does thank you so much um
and i really do appreciate that you guys
have
the forethought of including that in
your timeline right that budget analysis
um in in january so that's really
helpful
um i do have some more like in the weeds
questions um
i'm curious to hear from you or even pd
on
how many
welfare check calls you think you
receive
on a monthly basis
okay i would refer that counselor to the
police department uh chief or
sergeant
they're just pointing fingers but i will
stay up here with you
and and i will clarify that in that uh
the fire department
the fire department doesn't respond to
welfare checks by ourselves there are
times where the you know police
department will respond to offer a check
sometimes we will go with them if it's
you know a medical issue so
chief you have more on that
fire chief jason smith counselor ben
como members of council
so
the average right now when we look at
our cad system so these are the calls
that come in through the 911 system
looking specifically at the five call
types that paul ford mentioned earlier
we're somewhere between
70 to 90 calls a month now that number
fluctuates a little bit but we're
looking at being up somewhere closer to
if the trend continues
so as
time goes on we should be 80 90 calls
by next year if nothing else changes in
our community and everything holds
steady
thank you chief can you repeat the five
types of calls
yes so i think paul's going to get here
to double check but we're looking at
behavioral issues suicide attempts
intoxication and welfare
and paul which one did i miss
overdose
overdosed
okay
thank you
um you know as we
begin to develop the policy and
procedures i assume that
pd will be involved i'm curious about
how you all have started thinking about
that with the police department in terms
of
developing
such procedures i know that there's
procedures for domestic violence calls
for welfare calls i'm i i'm just really
cur i'm really curious about what those
policies and procedures are going to
look like between the light team and the
police department
council ben como and uh
so are we that's uh some of the timeline
that we built in is we know once we get
the coordinator position higher there's
going to be a lot of that stakeholder
meeting and working with each other one
of the reasons why battalion chief cody
haver and our staff at mih really want
sworn firefighters as part of the team
is to help to bridge that
quicker and sooner so that we can work
with sergeant mccord and his team and
and chief dominguez and really work out
what that's going to look like because
when we look at the number of responses
pd goes on a daily basis
all these calls take anywhere from one
to three officers that are responding to
them so it increases their workload and
if we can reduce that to where correct
no police officers are dispatched or
maybe it's just one or two when there's
a scene security issue for our providers
there's going to be more police officers
available for other calls so we
definitely want to work with them we we
see each other as partners in this
there's calls where we go to where we
need pd there first
to make sure that we're safe and we can
provide care
and thank you chief for that because i i
feel like when i think about cit teams
that is one of the most critical
components of it right is
reducing the amount of
police officers at any of these
particular scenes whether it's welfare
checks
definitely welfare checks behind
behavioral health suicidal ideation
those kinds of things
um and and so to me that's really
critical and i'm curious about do you
think you'll continue maybe this
question for mr pealey about
if you'll in the development of these
policies and procedures will they
continue to be brought back to the
health prc or how
will that reporting back to council be
um
as we're developing these policies
procedures
i'm not on that prc so i would love it
if it was in this setting but i also
understand that if it's easier if it was
through piercy
now counselor that that would be my my
thought going through back to prc i
think that's the the proper channel see
if you have another opinion on that or i
think mr p lee i would say the initial
development would definitely be done
through our staff and through the
coordinator position the lcsw and then
also our medical director dr divin
and then once we get there we would love
the chance to come back and and have our
staff present to the health prc and say
these are the protocols that we're
putting into place and also along with
that what stakeholder meetings have we
held you know where are we going out
into the public to to get input and buy
in as we create this team okay that's
excellent yes
um i think that makes sense back to the
health prc again you know if there's an
opportunity to come back to full council
i would you know this is something i'm
really invested in i know all of us are
um
to me those kinds of
pieces are what's most critical because
of
um what we've seen in our community in
terms of um law enforcement interaction
with some of the folks in these kinds of
situations and so
um i'm looking forward to that for sure
um
bc have did were you gonna say something
else i saw you maybe
yeah no i was just going to add uh back
to your question of you know how will we
coordinate with the police department so
we've actually had a lot of conversation
within our team and and
mr ford
there's going to be training components
on both sides i believe
not only for the police department
firefighters as well
and again that was why we felt it was so
important to have sworn firefighters on
these teams to be able to help bridge
that gap and they know the system
already so that way we can help
coordinate
because there will still be times not
only the police department but probably
a fire engine or even an ambulance might
be dispatched to certain types of calls
that then the light team will show up
and they need to
very quickly on the scene coordinate
with all of the different units on how
now we can get the client into the hands
of the light team so that we can have
everybody else you know leave the scene
when it's appropriate and so i think
there'll be
training aspects on both the police
department and the fire department for
just patrol officers and the
firefighters on the engines to make sure
that we coordinate all of that together
for a smooth transaction and i believe
again back to our timeline that's why we
wanted to take the next several months
to be able to have those meetings and
develop those partnerships so that we
can work with
sergeant macquarie chief dominguez and
his staff and also our own staff so that
we can make sure that everybody that
would be the first responders to one of
these scenes fully
knows and understands what the light
team can do
what they're capable of doing or what
their policies allow them to do so that
it's a very quick transaction there on
scene
if that makes sense it does absolutely
thank you so much it makes perfect sense
um i appreciate mayor purcham's question
on on training because i had a similar
question about especially de-escalation
training so thank you for that i'm
curious about training for 9-1-1 staff
okay
um what have those conversations look
like i know that that's such a huge
component to make sure that
um calls are being reported out to who
they're supposed to be sure counselor
bencomo and
and mayor
we have a lot of conversations still to
have about that mr ford actually has
been involved in several of those
conversations recently and i'll let him
kind of answer that just as on a
strategic level what we're looking at is
988 is very quickly coming into play for
us right and there's still some
questions on how that will become useful
here in our community how that will work
and so
there will be quite a few meetings
especially with chief smith because he's
on that board with murder of how to
coordinate 988 and
and how to 911 get those calls
dispatched out so internally with our
staff we will be
when we get the mental health providers
and the coordinator and the case manager
and the firefighters all together over
the summer we will begin helping them
understand
the background of all of these types of
calls
and why we might respond to them and how
we would handle them and then with with
the chief's help we will then work
through merv to understand how we can
correspond 911 and 988 together right or
with the crisis hotline so if that makes
sense
yes sir
all right fire chief jason smith and
council bitcoin one other thing that's
going to be added through mirvda through
our psap is they're looking at an rfp
for a priority call system so this will
actually have a series of questions that
they'll ask to screen calls and give
them a certain category of priority it
will also make a resource determination
so as bc hibern was talking about the
training there's also a software
component as well that will hopefully
screen these calls appropriately and
then get the right resources dispatched
out to them wow so that's great as that
new system be becomes implemented there
will also be training for that wow thank
you that's excellent and really my last
question is around data and so my ask
would be that you know in the first
couple of years
um i don't know what would feel most
feasible to you but bringing back that
data collection to council in this
setting i don't know if it's quarterly
or biannually whatever feels most uh
doable to you all as well but that would
be another one of my asks that you that
initial data collection um be brought
back to us so that we can understand how
the program is working but thank you
seriously i just want to express my
gratitude again for all the work that
everyone has put into this thank you
absolutely thank you counselor thank you
counselor counselor flotus
thank you mayor and
i thank you baton chief
haver and
chief smith and mr smith thank you
actually i mean mr ford
mr ford goes to washington
thank you um
and and thank you also uh chief
dominguez and
deputy chief
sorry
no
yes
thank you all i
i had similar questions along the lines
as my colleagues
had um
and i'm i'm concerned not concerned well
yeah it is a concern
and i
um
and and you presented beautifully it was
probably one of our longest meetings uh
our prc
and it was quite
it was really enlightening and um
and i think uh
yeah it's just it's actually it does
bring tears to our eyes because we see
the commitment that you have and your
professionalism is amazing
amazing so thank you for all of that
so my concern is that
i i don't and the question that um
counselor bencomo had i too have in
support in in regards to
data gathering um so on page six you
have the clc crisis intervention team
incidents by hour of day
and i'm wondering whether
you'll have any data a year and a half
from now like
july or august september of 2023
to show that these numbers have gone
down
and
my guess would be that it wouldn't go
down
that they're going to be similar
because the underlying conditions that
exist now are not going to be resolved
by this
i mean
the fact that a lot of people are going
to be helped by your work and everything
that the
the team is doing
i i think there's going to be
more of a response i think there's going
to be a lot more help given directly to
people
but
so does anybody have any idea as to
what underlying conditions have to be
addressed before we see a change in the
incidents by hour of day
is that something you thought about sure
counselor if i may i'd like to invite mr
paul ford up um i think
he's very he's very um
educated in a lot of what you're asking
because of his work in the mobile
integrated health care field for the
last six years and working with all the
stakeholders around the community uh
you're absolutely right that it's it is
possible that these numbers might not go
down they might or might not based on
the response effectiveness of the team
and
uh but you're correct that is some
somewhat of a separate issue than the
underlying conditions and so uh mr ford
if you'd like to come up and just give a
couple of minutes of some of the things
that you've observed that
kind of bring this as a
sure
before paul
ford comes up to speak uh fire chief
jason smith i don't know if i may have
misstated the numbers earlier on the on
the call volume so i want to make sure i
was clear
monthly
pd through our cad system is seeing
close to 700 calls a month of those
types so i don't know if i mentioned
that per day or per month but to really
put the full scope of it it's 700 calls
a month for those types so there's
20 to 30 calls a day right now that take
place so before paul goes just to
frame that correctly well i propose the
number of calls
um if
these calls are going to go to did you
say 988 and then 988 is going to
determine whether it's really a 911
or a police
call or a fire call fire department or
police department call
with the numbers then go down
just because of that distinction because
you said that you get a lot of
calls that are really
in the police department
sure counselor and mayor so 911 and 988
are at this point two separate things
9-1-1 is all that we have available so
that's how most of these calls come
through 988 is
in a sense
it will become a 9-1-1 for behavioral
health calls nationwide there's a a
momentum nationwide to have a 988 system
or in most states to where somebody
that's having a behavioral health crisis
could call that specific number instead
of calling 9-1-1 so they get
more behavioral health-related
uh
help or dispatchers that help them
through that crisis as opposed to a
medical crisis like 9-1-1 it is the hope
that 988 and 911 nationwide will
integrate into local dispatch centers to
be able to you know use that to dispatch
mobile crisis teams we're not there yet
that can take several months from now
maybe even longer than several months
from now for that to get together so uh
the call volume that chief is talking
about right now is through 9-1-1 okay
and the reason i'm raising this is
because
um i think i i know that i know well all
of us want this to really work
and i don't
want
any kind of funding to be based on while
your numbers didn't go down what are you
doing and that's why i'm asking those
questions to address the totality
because when when your 9-1-1 has become
that has really become it's been there
like at least for about 30 40 50 years
and i don't know how long it'll be
before people really transition to 988 i
don't know if people will really know
the difference between a 911 call a nine
and eight you know they just know they
need help
so i just want to make sure that all
those distinctions are made and they're
caught
so that
say you come back a year from now or for
your 20 20
20 to 23 fiscal year which is right
around the corner really
tomorrow probably
you come back and the numbers look the
same and that just because that's the
way it goes with people i mean with with
city councils now so that that's why i'm
asking those questions and thank you
thank you cody sure counselor absolutely
don't don't mind answering that at all
and just to go back to your question
about the underlying conditions here in
the community i'll let mr ford uh have a
couple minutes so we can kind of talk to
talk you through that
mayor councillor flores members of the
council
uh that's an excellent question um
we don't know but what i can tell you is
that when i first started the mih
program that first couple of months i
got maybe
two referrals and i went out and saw
those two referrals and that was really
easy because i got two referrals i could
spend a lot of time with those people
now we get 50 to 60 referrals every
month from all over the place
so i imagine that if i help somebody
named john that lives in an apartment
and his uh his roommate also has
challenges
um john is going to advocate for for
that other gentleman to call and so
there's a possibility that the more
services that we provide and the better
services that we provide that increases
the amount of people that are going to
seek access but that's what we want
we want people to reach out and we want
to send them the right resources at the
right time 988
at some point as as the implementation
gets completed when somebody calls 911
the
that triage system that chief smith is
talking about will will uh will continue
to happen but certain people will be
navigated to the new mexico crisis
access line and that could potentially
be useful for a certain number of
individuals and then
if that
if the crisis seems like it's not going
to be resolved that way then those would
be kicked back to the 9-1-1 system and
then the light team would be deployed to
go out and do that so
sending the right team to somebody and
providing good services is always going
to uh
increase the demand for those services
so yes you're correct that there's a
chance that the calls could increase but
that's also more opportunities
for us to provide services to the
community
and
this program that we're developing
doesn't necessarily solve the challenges
of limited beds and acute behavioral
health facilities and there's no
long-term care for individuals and
individuals can still refuse services if
they want or they could go to the
emergency room and then they can
walk out the front door if they don't
want treatment and all of the other
things that we've talked about over the
years and as that continues to happen
and people continue to have a need there
will continue to be more and more and
more need in the community and we're
going to meet this need as best as we
can we're going to provide those
services to individuals but it's going
to be very interesting to see the
numbers because i
i i share your interest in what that's
going to look like because i know what
happened in the mih program but as long
as we're going out in the community and
we're providing good care for
individuals and we are available when
people have challenges i think we give
individuals the best opportunity to
receive the help that they need and
and it's contagious doing good like this
and developing programs is contagious
you do something like this and somebody
else gets excited and wants to do
something and then somebody else sees
that somebody else is doing something
and then everybody wants to do a little
bit more
and the community gets better for it and
hopefully the health care system so
thank you very much for your question
and thank you mr ford
thank you mr mayor thank you councillor
councillor beta
thank you
thank you to the whole team for
presenting and
all the work that you did before in the
presentation that you did to the health
prc i know there was a ton of questions
that were asked by everybody and a lot
of the logistics that you presented to
us i wanted to follow back up on a
couple of the items one of which being
kind of the hours of operation that the
light teams would be
kind of be able to be deployed
sure absolutely i can answer that
question counselor and mayor so at this
point uh we have begun to identify how
the staffing would look like for those
teams and the
what we're the model we're looking at
right now would be six days a week and
it would be the two teams operating
three days for one team three days for
the other team um
we're looking at the mix of how we can
give them their time off days off and
make sure that they're still available
for
training and admin functions and those
types of things but right now we're
looking at most likely 12 hour shifts 10
to 12 hour shifts and that would
probably be from 8 am until 6 to 8 pm at
night
also keeping in mind that you know they
need to be on the street for a certain
amount of time but they also are going
to have documentation paperwork
there's going to be admin functions that
they have to take care of
you know in the office as well so we
have to be cognizant that it will take
just a little bit of time for them to
get response ready first thing in the
morning when they show up for their
shift and then also taking care of
documentation at the end of the shift
before they go home or any debriefing
that they may need to do so right now
we're looking at more than likely six
days a week between the hours of
probably 8 am to about 8 p.m
okay great thank you and
though
it may start out slow
we know that they'll probably be used
more often so i hope that you'll feel
comfortable to come back with any
necessary budget adjustments
to create more teams if need be
because i think this is a
really valuable and necessary item that
we need to have for our community and
we want them to also you know trust that
it's going to be available for them and
so making sure that it's well staffed i
think will be very important to
establish that trust sure thank you
and then second it's back to the
training
and budget adjustments that might be
needing to make
you talked about mirvda
if they have training on their end
that needs to be done would those budget
adjustments come from our side or would
they be worked in differently
chief smith
would you like to answer that one
your fire chief jason smith
counselor beta those adjustments for
mervda would come through their budget
so if they project extra budget for the
implementation of 988 or from one of our
changes that we do
we should expect to see their request
okay great
and then with that in mind then
for chief dominguez
should we be seeing some budget
adjustments
with your end to make sure that all
officers are trained appropriately on
how to use the intervention team
good afternoon everyone uh police
shipping again lamingos for the record
mayor councillor
currently we have uh we've already
budgeted for for our training needs but
if we do have a
heavy need for more training absolutely
we would definitely put in for more okay
thank you as this is a new program i
figure this would probably need a
different type of training than what's
been done before
that's correct
so we're working on uh with our cit team
to put de-escalation and cit training
things of that nature but we're
constantly working with with the fire
department and knowing this was coming
we're also looking for training
opportunities okay fantastic thank you
thank you mr mayor
thank you counselor graham
thank you mayor um thank you to all of
the presenters this has been
incredible um luckily my brilliant
colleagues have
already teased out a lot of the answers
that i was seeking but i really
appreciate
that we're
verifying that this is synergy between
fire department and police department
because i think
the narrative when we try to look at a
new way to serve our public is sometimes
inevitably going to say oh we're
defunding the police but we're not this
is this is a synergy and this is looking
at innovative ways to best serve our
community so i appreciate that the line
of questioning
has made that clear
um
[Music]
the
the mih team um i had the opportunity to
do a ride along last week with
firefighter ford and with
i'm not sure counselor fowler but that
makes sense but the different kind of
counselor the s-e-l-o-r kind of
counselor fowler
um
and what i saw was
extraordinary um i was there for four
hours and
saw
people's lives being impacted in such a
beneficial way
[Music]
these are emts these are social workers
these are detectives who are looking
around to try to get any clue they can
about what's going on in their patients
and clients lives
to
to come up with the best way to treat
them holistically as people
and i think the only question that i
have remaining um
is from my reaction to that experience
which
honestly i went home and and had a
little bit of a cry
um
what i saw was amazing but what i saw
was also
a little heartbreaking so my question to
whoever would like to field it
the people who are helping others deal
with their grief their trauma are
inevitably exposed to that kind of grief
and trauma and need their own resources
so can someone
speak a little bit about how members of
light members of mih members of cit are
going to get the emotional support and
resources they need
while they're helping our community
all right council fire chief jason smith
mayor members of council
that is a that is a tough question
um
not not to answer but but to reflect
back on and know like what our teams and
what our personnel and
those of pd and um a lot of the other
programs that we have in the city like
our our senior programs what they go out
and they see in the community
as we go out and serve those who who
experience grief and harm
we we all take a little bit of that with
us
so we've been working on trying to
increase our our peer support program
within the fire department our next year
fiscal year request has funding for
bringing on a counselor
as well as funding our team for overtime
and a standby request for our peer
support personnel
but
i think the answer to the question goes
goes deeper into the philosophy and
culture that we want to have in the city
and at lcfd
and that's one where it becomes it
becomes okay to talk to each other and
to request that help to raise your hand
and say hey i need this i need i need to
talk to you about about something
i've personally have been there and i
know some of our our members who pour
their heart out into every single call
like
paul ford does
where we talk about
you're working too many days and
you need to change your schedule to get
a day off to go be with your family to
go see your little one at home
so i think that's
my answer as as the chief is is to work
on the the culture and then to ask city
manager
mr pealey and council for the funding to
put that culture into action and to make
sure that we don't fall
subject to having a line of duty death
because of suicide in our social workers
and our staff and our civilian employees
or our sworn personnel
thank you so much chief thank you mayor
thank you counselor for the question
councillor
koran and then i think
thank you thank you guys so much for for
coming out and i really appreciate
seeing you all and hearing and hey mindy
folks that i've
i really admire coming up with a plan to
address something in our community i
think to i have two sort of questions
and hopes in following up one is you all
have the the classic quality access cost
triangle i think alluded to here and
that's that's sort of a fundamental
public health thing that we talk about
but i think
we've all come to realize that
putting cost as one of the
parts of that triangle that's arguably
equal to care and quality and access has
become problematic because sometimes
there's an extraordinary focus on the
cost corner of this triangle and so i
would hope that
i i understand that we deal in money and
our deal is budget and you would you all
would understand that we we know that
our our role here is is thinking about
how much things cost but
i think that
in very real terms sort of what
counselor graham was alluding to
the the the benefits are are not
measured in these spreadsheets ever and
so i think
i hope that there's
that we consider it in ourselves what
what those benefits are and and don't
think about this in a only a dollars
framework
and so i hope that's part of our our
thinking about it and i know it's part
of it that you're thinking about it so i
think
i really appreciate you you including
this here but i also say as a public
health person i kind of don't want us to
be thinking that cost has the same
thing because we also have to
i mean if we really want to make it
about dollars and cents we can also
think about the benefits of things like
fewer
um settlements related to lawsuits but i
think and those are real benefits to
romano like this but i think that
moreover people's lives being saved as
you know
as a fire department and police that's
that doesn't go on the other side of the
accounting spreadsheet so i just want to
acknowledge that
so and then the second part is i think
um i've heard from folks uh when when
before i was running for office about
the potential for synergy and then the
the ways that we can do that more
constructively and so i hope that i i
remember hearing a story about
you know sort of frequent flyers and
hearing the number 700 people
every month in our community
having these types of calls i suspect
there are a number of people for whom
this is a repeat sort of process and so
i think in thinking about the data
you all really will see yourselves as
the folks who can paint a picture of
what we really need
in terms of other city services that may
be able to rise up to respond to things
like
i remember hearing about being
the mental the mobile mental health unit
being called out to
someone who may have been hoarding and
the need for uh
something to like a big trash bin to
help them get rid of it right and that's
also a city service and so thinking
about things like how we can build on
the synergies between other city
departments identify places in our
community where there really is
not a good path for folks i think
related to behavioral health services we
know there's there are lots of barriers
so i'm hoping that you all can also
integrate into your thinking and become
and expect us to look to you as experts
in thinking about how we can do the next
step and and sort of address that and
think longer term about those 700
numbers and
not just measuring by that but seeing
the future for what we can do
to address those things so i i
appreciate you all stepping into this
role and i know that you've been doing
it a lot lately and i hope that we can
continue to support it in the most
meaningful ways possible so
thank you counselor counselor flotus oh
thank you mr mayor um
so
a chief smith you mentioned that
in
council graham had a question about
or a comment about
having the adequate funding
for you to have that system where you
can
have
you can talk to each other or whatever
it is
what did you well there's a certain word
for it
peer support yes your peer support yes
so
if you
peer support isn't just standing in the
by the water cooler saying
hey how's your day oh you know geez it
was this it was that and then another
buddy coming up and saying how was that
yeah it was i'm sure
uh that that would be very helpful too
but it seems to me so do you have that
infrastructure at this point in terms of
to have that peer-to-peer support but
having a professional
be the moderator for it or
what does that exactly mean and
and then you mentioned something about
budgeting something like that or
or did i just hear wrong
council flora's fire chief jason smith
so we do have a peer support team um
unfortunately i will say that
it is not as robust and as developed as
it should be
for where we're at with the department
we do have a couple of members who
participate in the state peer support
team so they go to critical incidents
throughout the state and work on there
the budgeted items we were talking about
was a standby account and training
for that team so we can start to develop
it and give them more skills and
training to to intervene peer-to-peer we
also have a portion of
the budget that we're requesting for
actual professional
intervention services so it is a budget
item that you have
and another one that you're creating
so that it can be funded is right the
peer-to-peer is funded but you want
so that that's the sort of stuff that we
will need clarification on and um and
i'm i think we're all in agreement that
we just want to make sure that
that you stay healthy you know that you
have uh
that infrastructure that supports
everything you go through
um
and
so just yeah
thank you
thank you counselor
mayor pro tem yes thank you i did want
to follow up it is
citing national.org
they have some
trainings coming up very rapidly and
then for the peer-to-peer um mr pealey
and i had a conversation with robin
rayban a counselor in town that's doing
a lot of counseling for folks in public
safety doing some incredible work along
with her colleagues and she recommended
that counseling team international out
of
san bernardino california there's some
basic peer supports in fact there is a
training coming up march 21st through
23rd and then the next on may 25th
through 27th and it's sort of a
peer-to-peer
opportunity that you're certified in
that you keep getting if and advanced if
you wanted to but what was interesting
to me is they also offer supportive
services for uh you know unfortunately
as council graham is speaking to the
vicarious drama is real
and you all know that i don't have to i
don't have to
to say that but there's some amazing
supports
that you know
services to help with alcohol and drug
addiction and and that are that are
there very specifically for public
safety um
personnel that i think it just makes it
just easier right and it's out of town
out of state it's not here local and and
i think those are very important and
something that i thought would would
benefit us
um
in the long run and so um yeah i would
recommend that you speak to her she's a
well-known counselor in in our in our um
in our city and i've i've known her a
long time we've done a lot of work at
child protective services together and
and and i have a lot of respect for her
but she sort of i didn't know that she
had sort of moved into this next
phase in in her professional career and
i she reached out to me and we had a
meeting with mr pealey and i thought
what she was saying and the different
programming that she's gotten trained on
is is something that i believe would
benefit all of us so um you know with
that mayor i'll turn it back over to you
thank you
thank you mayor pro tem
so chief let me just ask you a couple
questions or
corey battalion chief so
monday through saturday 8 a.m to 8 p.m
and then
but not on sunday so
what would happen if there was an
incident that was needed say sunday at i
don't know noon or three o'clock
is there someone on call or how does
that work mayor fire chief jason smith
uh
right now that chief can i have you
speak into the mic a little bit yeah
because i don't think they're picking
you up too well
that response would be handled as it is
right now with our current resources so
that would be a call generated to the
police department or to the ambulance
provider
or to the fire department
so i have to you know
along with my colleagues i'm really
impressed with the program that you're
all putting forth everyone who's worked
on this
and
i guess what i'm trying to say is and i
thought
i thought
councillor koran was going to go there
she was kind of at the at the door
how much would it cost if we were to do
this maybe it's going to be half because
just on sundays and then on the other
from 8 p.m to 8 a.m
but if we're gonna do this let's just
let's just go big and just do it the
right and and and maybe take if we need
to i mean you're saving i've seen the
proposals from outside you're saving the
city a lot of money
sorry but you are and
and we need to use money from our uh
telstra fund that's what it was used for
specifically for health and so
i think i would like to see you come
back with and mayor pretend
maybe pro tem came up with a suggestion
this is both for police and fire you're
the peer to peer the
counseling what you feel that needs to
be funded fully as well as
just make this 24 7 365 still keep the
same hours for the others but
but you know do what you need to so we
have another team that takes over on
sundays and you know
some night owls that can't go to sleep
and want to work from 8 8 8 p.m to 8 a.m
well i mean yeah
it doesn't yeah so i don't know your
thoughts on that
mayor
um just going to hide my smile all right
no we can we can definitely look at that
but if i'm understanding
the directive is looking at 24 7
staffing
every day of the year for this team
that's that's the request you would like
to see what that would cost the city for
us to propose to the city manager right
and then bring that portion if need be
if we can't you know because it's it's
i know we have a half a billion dollar
budget but still it's there's a lot of
parts already in place and just to move
money out whereas at least for this time
we could probably take it from the
telstra fund and then we can incorporate
it for the next fiscal year
but
i would i would like for those at least
bring two proposals back which you've
proposed here and the costs and then
another one for 24 7 365.
and let's just go with it
thank you
is that good
yeah okay and as well as the
peer-to-peer for both police and fired
uh because as you're as you're right i
mean i i i talk to retired police and
fire and and the things that they what
you all go through is incredible i mean
social workers i mean that's
i i know it's just uh an incredible
job what you go through what you see
what you experience and
i'm glad
councilor graham brought that up so
you have some friends that want to drop
i'll ask you around if i may mr mayor
and counselor can you state your name
again please yes allison stoner licensed
master social worker um i just wanted to
go back a little bit to the peer support
conversation um and something that
hasn't been mentioned yet but one of the
one of the major reasons why we looked
for an lcsw or equivalent level of
oversight is for the supervision aspect
part of that being you know really work
and
job related
but also for the reflective side of it
and having that as a resource for these
teams
is definitely a large part of the reason
why we are looking for that oversight
because i know that it is very important
to all of us in mih and las cruces
police and las cruces fire
that our staff are well cared for
and that those resources are available
to them
thank you
any other questions about members of the
i'm going to open up to members of the
public i didn't realize there were a few
here if anyone wants to say any oh
ma'am you want to come yeah sure
just need to state your name please and
you can pull that down i think mindy
fowler licensed master social worker
i just wanted to briefly address some of
the concerns about the self-care of
the team members
and
we've discussed
as a group
ways to implement debriefing
and
structures within the teams itself
to provide support in the moment
and then also for reflection afterwards
and having worked in teams before where
there's a lot of vicarious trauma
this format as well as the increased
supervision
from an lcsw
tends to be very helpful
thank you
thank you for that input
was there any members of the public who
i'll give you three minutes do you want
to speak yeah just come forward please
and yes up here and just state your name
and if there's anyone else if you want
to make your way forward you're welcome
hi mayor city of the
council members my name is manuel
sierras
i've been going through a lot of this
with i'm not going to mention any names
but what a family member
i've heard a lot about people
transporting and i would like to know
once you transport them it seems like
it's in one door out the other when they
reach the peak or anywhere else they go
also i haven't heard nothing about the
victim assistance
family members that have to live through
this
every day
i know under the d.a program they have a
victims if you're assaulted or anything
but there's no counseling
uh i would just like those things
answered i don't know if my wife wants
to add to it uh but
that's not what i'm hearing
this i think it's a great program
but uh to make it work i think it's once
they're transported and they get that
immediate attention if they're alcoholic
drug or or mentally you know
not there but how about afterwards
because what it seems like this is a
revolving door
you go in and you come out i've heard
things that well is it he's okay to come
home now you think you're safe
are you
i think that's what the public really
really needs is
and it might be a state issue
but i think we need something
afterwards
once they get into the into this and
programs that are going to help them
even at the high school
at the college level or
seniors
that's all i have to say
i didn't take three minutes no
you brought up some very good points so
are you're saying you're talking about
so let's say you have a family and one
member of the family is the one who's
being
treated or right and then after
they're received their
their treatment so to speak
when they come home is
did the that was more of the short term
yeah and then it just seems like it goes
on and on so
the as far as the health
it's if they especially if they have
health insurance so they yeah now if
they don't now no i don't know if the
state will cover that through medicaid
or not
are you aware of that well i just wanted
to know that if this crisis unit comes
out they come out in a team as a team
police fire
and everybody else are they also
is it they're also just helping the
person in question are they helping
the the whole family unit the nucleus of
the whole family
yeah yeah i would think it's just the
individual themselves i don't know okay
that's what i that's why
department speak but i know the the main
reason for doing so is because a lot of
times
um what we're trying to do is just have
a shift i think from from our
our
police officers just dealing with
everything and now it's a little bit
more
specialized and a lot more helpful and
bringing in people who know how to you
know who this is what they do
and um i don't know if the chief wants
to elaborate on that
yes i mean sir thank you for coming here
today and for saying that i mean i think
you're
to councillor graham's point i mean
you're identifying such a key thing
about wrap around services right for the
long term and so you know i think
what i heard at least from this team in
this presentation today was that there's
going to be a lot of stakeholder
conversations that include city
departments certainly but
community organizations right people who
are filling some of these gaps already
and hopefully as a community we can
identify in the long term what that kind
of support looks like
at the end of the day though i think
it's a really big task and it does
involve state level i mean i don't know
if you were here for the conversation we
had around homelessness but some
advocates even lifted up big barriers
there and so um i think this is just one
critical really important piece of the
whole puzzle but you know i i do
appreciate the public naming these kinds
of things that
you know i want to hear from people
directly impacted on the things that you
need and so
i re i just wanted to say that mayor and
to say that i did hear them say about
stakeholder conversations and that i i
hope that those
conversations include what you're
talking about in terms of wrap around
services for long term all right thank
you
thank you i appreciate it sir
i'm mayor members of city council fire
chief jason smith i think that uh to
that point uh the gentleman just
speaking the wraparound services i
believe that is an elevate las cruces
goal that we're working on and the
stakeholder conversations councilor ben
como as you mentioned will be very
important for us to talk with pd and
sergeant mccord and ask what other
services are are going to be able to be
there to help provide these families
great i appreciate that that might be
something there that
we might want to hint if it's not there
already with our health and human
services monies that we give
annually that maybe that'd be a focus
for
some of our non-profits to focus on that
and that might be
a way to get some funding for that
yes councilor flores yes if i may miss
mayor
yeah there has been
i guess the word is movement
i don't know what else to call it about
having a
health district a district health uh
center
and um and that would be but i don't
know where that has gone or if it's
moved anywhere i mean if there's been
any movement any development in that
regard
but um because
it would
take care of a lot of the situations
that the gentleman brought up
because people have after you've
seen people or gone to this uh gone to
them what do they do then
and again it is a question of the
underlying conditions and those are
going to take decades to change i'm sure
but in the interim
um
there's that
health
district that
has been in the making and i don't know
what the status is but it would um
it would definitely address that and
and hopefully um hopefully the um
because the triage center seems to not
be fulfilling any of that need that we
have in our communities
so
hopefully
that
that district will develop with
surrounding communities all pitching in
to make it a reality and have
long-term services for people who are in
need
and and thank you sir for for being here
and and thank you
chief thank you mr mayor
welcome
anybody else members of the public
we just need you to state your name
please
three minutes
that's what they're all saying and hello
i'm
mary pazudi i live here locally i just
recently i live here locally well i'm
sorry about you i'm just mary pazudi
i'm um just recently we had somebody
overdose behind our
facility our own home
and
emt came out and people took care of him
and it was wonderful i'm just wondering
what exactly are we as a community doing
to stem the flow of drugs
in our
in our las cruces city
that's a tough one
i don't know if
if
chief smith or chief dominguez wants to
talk a little bit about what
metro narcotics does what various
task forces are doing
kind of monitoring things
education through the schools
mayor members of uh city council fire
chief jason smith chief dominguez to
talk about the law enforcement side and
then i'll ask uh
allison stoner our social worker who's
part of our opioid intervention team to
come up and speak
good afternoon police chief megan
laminges
to answer the lady's question
we have
many many overdoses and we've started a
program through our community advocate
program to
address some of these issues
they are very very quickly overwhelmed
with the amount of work that they are
getting i was speaking with mr peeley
about this the other day
we send them out whenever there is a
traumatic experience such as an overdose
or shooting things of that nature and
and we are touching a lot of victims
uh we're we're plugging them into these
different resources throughout the city
to get assistance for specifically that
uh i'll give you an example of of one
that we did just recently we had a
shooting in a in a certain area and we
sent our community advocates to
uh help the the neighborhood we're good
at going and helping the the residents
where it happens but we send them out so
they can reach out to the neighbors
to make sure they weren't having any
issues and
they brought back some really really uh
heart wrenching stories there was a lady
that lived right next door she was
having the same issue because
somebody had tried to kill her a few
years back and she had her children
locked up in the room for two days some
something like that and
overdoses uh we work with uh a lot with
metro narcotics to try to get some some
extra services out there
but we do have a
major task in front of us if we're
looking for resources to just deal with
it overdose themselves as well as
any victims
that are related to that
that that call pretty much
thanks chief
you know i i'm often reminded about when
um
our former governor not the current one
when they crack down on what you thought
was some
things going on with our health
our mental health providers and kind of
shut them all down
and and i remember this one expert said
you just wait through about three about
four or five years when you have a
really huge problem and this is about
time and it's really coming to bear and
it's unfortunate and then you you add
coveted in there it's just been really
uh very difficult
and interestingly
i mean and i know people are concerned
about crime this is and and i was
telling the i don't know constituent the
other day that you know we get
calls from u.s conference of mayors the
their its crime is rampant throughout
the united states in fact the front the
headline that because i read like five
newspapers a day uh
hobb's new son second hob shooting in a
week they don't normally see shootings
two in a week
we we can't explain it i don't know i
don't know what's happening right now
it's it's just a difficult time
but yeah the trauma as mayor pro tem
rightfully says so i guess we're we're
doing everything we can and doing the
best we can and and having as many
programs as possible for those that are
in need
and um all we can just say is just you
know we're doing doing everything we
have possible so thank you for bringing
up those questions
allison
mayor and council cody haver battalion
chief
i just want to quickly uh reintroduce
you to a program that we have in the
fire department and then i'll have
allison come up and talk a little bit
about her work
we were given a grant through the state
health services department through the
behavioral health services department
through the state it was a four-year
grant for us to provide a social worker
and a firefighter emt as a team
to go out and do preventative and harm
reduction work
for opiate-specific
overdoses and we've been doing this
program now for two years and allison is
the social worker that's assigned to
that that's our specific job role and
what we do in that program is uh for the
last almost two years we look through
all of our 911 data for every
type every call that could potentially
be an opiate overdose we look at those
calls we're able to look at the
at the data the address the people
involved and we go out within 48 hours
and
actually go out and do advocacy work
with them so
i'd like allison stoner to come up and
just talk a little bit about what she's
seen we can't explain the influx of of
drugs and other substances as the the
resident was asking about but
us and the police department and several
other departments around the state are
being funded or receiving grant funding
to try to do more preventative work and
try to do more harm reduction work in
the community to at least lessen again
those incidences of grief harm and
trauma that are being caused by these
outside sources of
you know unsavory things coming into our
community so alison
thanks cody
good afternoon allison stoner licensed
master social worker i think that cody
gave a very good overview of the program
and just to add a little bit to what he
already mentioned so myself and a
paramedic we are partnered to look
through the 9-1-1 call data we then do
identify
what originally started out as being
opiate specific that is what our funding
is for
however as i think we all know many of
the resources in the las cruces
community whether it's an opiate related
overdose and alcohol-related overdose
the resources available are very similar
so we have sort of broadened our scope
of practice to
address
overdose in the community
in general
and we are then once we do identify
those overdoses we we go straight to the
homes of those individuals
and we ask if they have heard of our
program if they're interested in
chatting with us
one of the major benefits of coming from
the fire department is that if there was
an overdose they often say well yeah you
guys were here a couple of days ago
responding to the call and that creates
a very
a lot of trust and they're often very
willing to have candid conversations
with us about their use or their friends
use
and then we
try to direct to services as much as
possible
like cody said i think that we are
working very much to be preventative and
harm reduction but we are also working
very strong to be advocates
the
health system in general not just in las
cruces can be very intimidating and
overwhelming to go through
so sometimes for us that means just
going to the hospital to advocate on
that individual's behalf to try and
direct to treatment if that is something
that they are interested in whether that
is a ride from us from the hospital to a
treatment facility
or whether it's making calls to facility
to facilities outside of las cruces
if that will be where the individual is
better served those are the services
that we are trying to provide
um and then additionally we do try to
follow sort of some trends and we try to
provide a lot of education
something that we're definitely seeing
for the past few months in las cruces is
an influx of fentanyl
and a lot of individuals who are
you know willing to share with us they
didn't actually know that that is what
they were taking that's something that
we see a lot so being able to educate
folks that that is something that is
happening whether we have an impact on
if they decide to change their use or
not
we are there to provide the education
that they are at least aware of what is
what is happening in the community
thank you very much
thank you allison
so chief let me just after listening to
what allison said and then with the
information we've heard right here i
don't know if my colleagues want
for
efo and his team to look at
some type of uh educational
point as well whether it's billboards
whether it's print media digital media
social media the dangers of like you
just said they didn't know what they
were taking and they would they take
this
and and i've seen some
[Music]
shows
you know sometimes when i'm doing some
work i'm listening to this one show
called american
greet and they were talking about
exactly what you said these these kids
and then they end up dying they don't
know what they're taking so i think if
we can start educating the public a
little bit i mean that goes hand in hand
with what we're doing here you're all
providing this but if we can provide
that component of educating the public a
little bit
and focus on the the medians that they
mediums that they use what tick-tock or
instagram things like that
i'm just i do use facebook and twitter
that's it but i don't know the other
stuff
but you know is that something you think
would be helpful
mayor fire chief jason smith i will look
at that with a communications office as
well as pd and see what kind of
messaging we could get out and what that
would take to to provide
yeah i think it's i think it's important
i think we really need to educate um
from from
our youth to
[Music]
you know all the way up i just start
start young let them know just
just you know like that old that
campaign say no to drugs and just let
them know what it's all about and how
they can end up hurting themselves
killing themselves
and
i think it's important mayor yes
i think that's a great idea
um i've been reading uh
lately a lot of and talking to local
advocates lately about
fentanyl test strips
and that frankly they can save lives i'm
curious about
the fire department and the city
investing in fentanyl test trips that
maybe you already have them chief i
don't know
council been coma mayor no i i don't
think that we have any i believe the
state's moving towards that and i want
to say that allison and i briefly had a
conversation about those last week
great i think alignment synergy as they
keep saying i think that's a great idea
uh maybe take a look at
see if that can be provided even in some
of our
schools you know whatever i mean let's
be candid
we have to not put our head in the sand
i mean things happen and
i know
perhaps in some of the community schools
that that if they have that
at least available
they might be able to i don't know
i think it's not it's worth a try so
thanks for bringing that up counselor
and other places that people can have
access to without no questions asked or
just whatever just you know don't be
messing with that stuff it's going to
hurt you it could hurt you it could kill
you
and mayor if i could just uh close the
meeting for this part of it uh just to
say thank you to council and to the city
manager's office and mr pealey for
giving us kind of direction and letting
us present to the health prc
as well as finance and barbara de leon
and leanne de mooshford
helping us with our our budget request
and then especially to our mih team
and sergeant mccord they're really the
ones behind driving what this team was
going to look like and what we presented
so
my sincere thanks to those individuals
thank you chief i appreciate it very
much i also want to take a moment to
thank mayor pro tem gandalf for
her educating me i know years ago and
really pushing this and and it's nice to
see it coming to fruition and looking
forward to it and like i said present us
those proposals and let's move forward
okay great thanks
so next item is the
census
presentation
policy analyst sergio ruiz will be
discussing
i'm almost as tall as the
chief here
close to it well you know you can pull
that down
yeah
there you go it's a joke
good afternoon mr mayor city council
senator ruiz policy analyst for the
record
this is a multi-faceted presentation
that we will provide
that will provide information on the
census and how will how it will impact
the
various departments within the city of
las cruces
along with an update on
redistricting i will begin the
presentation with a comparison of the
2010 and 2020 census demographics
census demographic demographics the
population of new mexico according to
the 2
2020 census is 2 million 117
522 people
the population of new mexico according
to the 2010 census was 2 million 59
179 people
there has been a 2.8 percent increase or
343 total increase in population in new
mexico within the last decade
the new mexico population by race
breakdowns is um in the 20
2020 census is 49 hispanic
white
3 african american
percent native american and one percent
asian
by the mexican population by raising the
2010 census was 46 000 uh excuse me 46
percent hispanic
68 percent white
two percent african american
nine percent native american and one
percent asian the asterisk there uh i
want to emphasize the number of
disparity uh within the last ten years
is due to an increase in multiracial
marriages uh and in the children of
these marriages people are selecting
more than one race in in these cases so
that's why the disparity in the
disparity in the numbers
the medium household income uh the
minimum household income in new mexico
according to the 2020 census is 51
945 dollars
and it was 49
460 dollars back in 2010.
the current national median household
income is sixty five thousand seven
hundred and twelve dollars
and the current poverty rating in mexico
is nineteen point one percent while the
national rate is twelve point three
percent
the population by age group
in new mexico is ages 18 to 24 in the
2010 census
was 204
as opposed to the 2020 census 196
thousand one hundred and fifty there was
a decrease in that age population
ages 25 to 64. the 2010 census was 1
million
thousand 67
hundred ninety eight as opposed to the
two thousand twenty census one million
forty seven thousand seven hundred and
sixty seven there was also a decrease in
that of age population
age of sixty five and over the 2010
census
was 274 097
2020 census was 389
911 there was an increase in that age
population
the median median age for new mexico is
38.6 years old
the population diversity in the state is
uh as of 200 2020 9.4 percent or 197 000
new mexico residents
were born outside of the country
the most common birth place for
foreign-born residents of new mexico is
mexico with 129 061 000
followed by the philippines at 6791
and vietnam with 6 226.
the most common foreign language spoken
in the state of new mexico is spanish
with
524 990
speakers veteran population of new
mexico as of 2020 new mexico's veteran
population is 176
566 or 8.75 percent
there are approximately 2 134
veterans from world war ii
7629 from the korean war
50 998 from vietnam war
18 868 from gulf war 1990s
war and
27 198 from the gulf war 2001 and
above
excuse me there are 14 thousand
currently fourteen thousand forty eight
veterans
of the population of veterans in dona
county
and with that i will leave that to the
next presenter
hello hello robert cabello with deputy
city attorney just give him some
background information and kind of
indicate where we're at
in a couple of slides
so on september 7th
the city council passed resolution
21-196
and that resolution was essentially
authorizing and creating the ad hoc
committee for redistricting
and its purpose was to work with
research and polling in inc to evaluate
the redistricting proposals and to get
public input
and the contract right now for research
and polling was finally sunned with
purchasing back on february 4th this
year excuse me rob can you speak into
the mic a little bit more okay i will
okay now so the ad hoc redistricting
committee was created again to get
public input on these different
proposals
it consists of seven different members
each counselor gets to pick a member and
the mayor gets to pick a member
upon majority vote the committee is
going to then forward the information to
research and pulling for its
consideration into various proposals
of course this committee has to follow
the open meetings act
and it provides it's also required to
provide city council summary reports of
its activities at various times
the current members
are committee members that have been
picked for district 1 estela hernandez
district 2 rose rosie rose marie sanchez
district 3 terry cook
district 4
lydia haymond
district 5 francis lerner and district 6
michael harris
with that i'll actually move to
community development
good afternoon mayor city council i'm
larry nichols community development
director
you know the census information really
has a lot of impact on our development
and how it we address those folks that
are coming to our city
i've been with the city now
i lived here all my life but i've come
back to here
the last five years and i've seen a
tremendous amount of development
that's all to do with the census
the impact we had with the census
numbers that we received from the most
recent study was
atlanta use development it really
changed our dynamic
with the new homes property valuations
new commercial new subdivisions
the infrastructure demands associated
with all those activities
and
attainable housing
the graph you see over to the right
it shows in the blue is the night 2021
progress and then
the 2020 is yellow and the red is 2019.
but you see in the upper right-hand
report of the development report
that the blue graph numbers have
exceeded
every year previous to that
we have issued
quite a bit of
quite a large number of increase in our
in our permitting
and our subdivisions to address the
census increases
the note there below shows gis updated
the census bureau data
by 20 000 dwelling units it seems like
probably quite a large number to you
but what we were the census of bureau
was capturing was
we would address when a new parcel came
on there would be one address
for that entire parcel
but that parcel may have a apartment
complex
that had maybe 100 units that each had a
separate address
so that is
something that we were provided to the
census bureau that helped increase our
our number for our total census count
what happened since 2016 with with this
growth in population
we had 413 13 new homes
uh and you see the graph
uh this kind of exponential
number going from 2016 to
2021 where there were 907
i did a little research in the national
average that they have for a dwelling a
residential single family dwelling
is
2.67 occupants
for each dwelling we round that to three
you can see in 2021
that that would be close to a couple of
thousand folks
that have come into las cruces
the addressing the impact the resource
we recognize that this increase is going
to require us to have additional
resources
for the community development department
we're looking at those how to
accommodate those through the elevate
las cruces implementation of elevate las
cruces which we have begun
as all of our departments in this city
have
we are currently updating our real what
we call realized las cruces
which is the land use or the zoning
updates
uh why would that be uh an impact from
the census well we find that a lot of
people
are wanting to rezone their properties
in order to build more housing units or
more businesses
and of course we've been notified by the
state
construction industries division
that they will be adopting the 2021
international code conference building
code
as well as we have already adopted the
2018 energy code but they'll be updating
to the 2021.
and i think it's time for las cruces
to consider adopting the property
maintenance code
to be in concert and work with
our code enforcement
and
improving properties that would become
available to accommodate new housing
units and particularly attainable
housing
the staff and technology and
we're calling ourselves
the las cruces community development
department
we're wanting to we proposed it with our
budget this year but be known as the las
cruces development center
and we'll be needing to address this
increase in population
that the census bureau has told us about
to
for planners need more inspectors permit
technician code enforcement staff
software and application advancements
roll on las cruces roll on
that's what the census basically the
census report has identified for us
2021 saw the population growth
record-setting activity
with twenty three hundred and twenty one
million permit valuations
907 new homes
nine thousand new permits
eighteen thousand inspections
and more importantly 137 planning
developments
644 solar permits
and then our development fees our public
safety fees
our utility fees and our park fees all
go together to providing services for
the new population coming here
what did the census tell me
we've been witnessing and i showed you
on a previous graph where we had this
exponential growth
and
i believe it's going to constitute
get the pointer down here
a change in
pace and this is where we're headed
no longer the slow
sequential
equal pace
we'll be seeing growth in las cruces
with a change in place similar to what
you saw there
and the mayor i think you've seen this
slide once before
and you asked me at that time
well who won that race
and my comment back to you was
the citizens of las cruces
and i think that's what we're going to
see continue to see
and with that i yield the floor to the
well one more time just so i
have a good image
okay well thank you for that
reminder last time i used to race cars
and with that i yield to the next
presenter
dr payadis
hi mr mayor members of the city council
the economic development department was
tasked with discussing workforce
to understand workforce dynamics in the
city of las cruces is to understand
population dynamics overall the the
first thing that we have right here in
front of you
is a population pyramid that compares
2010 to
which is the latest that we have for the
american community survey data available
the next the 2020 data for the acs is
going to be released in three more days
so in three more days the this graph
might change substantially
nevertheless for today the latest data
we have is 2019.
the panel on your left shows you and
actually the population pyramids what it
intends to do is to show you
how a population is changing over time
according to the different age cohort
and according to the different sex
category in which it is answered in the
in the census uh obviously here just for
simplicity purposes i put pink to
represent the female population in blue
to represent the male population and the
numbers right next to each one of the
bars represents the percentages that it
has within its own group so for instance
what i want you to see from the left
panel is that uh the base and this the
circle population pyramids for a reason
right usually when the base is is larger
that implies that a population tends to
be growing
right as as you can see from the changes
that we have from the 2010 population
pyramid to the 2019 population pyramid
that base is getting
thinner
and and that is that is no surprise this
is not a phenomenon that is just
happening to us this is a phenomenon
that is happening to the entire united
states
as many developed nations as they
continue to grow when it happened to
europe it happened to japan but it's
going to happen to us at some point um
there tends to be a reduction in the uh
number of of the younger population uh
we're getting we're getting older right
and and the the las cruces population is
actually younger in comparison to the
state of new mexico than to the united
states as a whole as well so the median
age in the city of glasgow is about 32
age 32
years of age um whereas in the state of
new mexico the the data that sergio just
showed up was about 38 right so we're
younger thanks to the university
actually that's largely thanks to the
university um and and one of the
categories that i want you to see is
that um
if we don't have a growing
base in that area right we we do gain
population as as larry just mentioned in
his in his previous slide um but what is
this this base from which we're going to
be building upon right individuals from
ages under five years old all the way
until
19 years old if you look at the base for
the 2010 it was a bit wider compared to
the base in
2019 as you can see it from there so
again understanding the characteristics
of your population is understanding the
future of your workforce um as a
representation of how our workforce has
looked like at least from the um from
the data that we have available again
the the the next one is going to be in
20 in three more days it's going to be
2020 acs estimates um but the la the
latest one that we have for 2019 you can
see the panel on the left has population
the labor force for the city of las
cruces it has grown up to 2019 and my
expectation is that the 2020 data for
that the percentage of the population
that belonged to the workforce probably
dropped um that's for the 2020 because
that that affected everyone due to covet
conditions um so my expectation is that
the that that it's prop for 2020 it's
probably going to be a smaller amount of
the 51 000
for the female in the population
for the city of las cruces the panel on
your right my expectation again is for
that 2019 estimate on the number of
females in the in the labor force for
the 2020 to have dropped and the reason
for that is that a lot of females went
back
to take care of their kids take care of
their family while the pandemic while
they were trying to have
mitigate between
jumping and
child care and digging to
the whole school system in the online
fashion and things of this nature
fortunately right now um and one of the
unfortunate things about the census is
that it's slow to provide their
estimates
right but nevertheless we do have some
later estimates that are not from the
census from the vls and also from new
mexico
workforce connections in new mexico
workforce solutions that do provide a
bit more data more updated data
that tells us more of a dynamic change
on a month-to-month basis at least so we
know that people are returning to their
work right and they're returning to the
workforce but i don't know if you've
noticed there's a lot of people hiring
out there
right and it's a challenge and it will
continue to be a challenge to find the
right workers for um
for our community if you see the 2019
employed population by industry in the
city of las cruces you can see that at
least in 2019 again this is data by the
census the latest one we have is 2019 is
that at least one out of every three
individuals in las cruces that was
employed was employed in the educational
services and healthcare and this is no
surprise to anyone a lot of people that
we know work in one of those so that's
roughly about one out of every three and
again that change from 2015 to 2019 the
panel on your right is a bit outdated
and again this is because the census the
latest data that comes from the census
provides um that that that change and
and i think in that one the largest
growth was in the educational healthcare
services and the largest decrease has
been on the arts entertainment and
recreation
if we compare it to the 2020 of course
during kobe probably one of the
the most difficult or the hardest hit
was the restaurants the hospitality
industry that we now know 2022 has
recovered as well so so again this is
data from the census and just comparing
and one of the difficulties about the
census data is that it provides um the
data in a very lagged fashion but it's
very detailed so that's that's the
counterpart to that
if we look at the 2019 and 2015 the
panel on your left it just shows
commuting to work and it showed that the
fewer individuals were commuting using
cars trucks more people were
carpooling an interesting characteristic
also on that left is that more people
started working from home from 2015 to
2019 but an even more interesting um
census
data point is is that panel on your
right in which you can see that from
2019 to 2015 the shares of individuals
that were related to the children so
related children of the household under
18 years of age substantially dropped so
just to put it in perspective about 48
of households back in 2015 i had an
individual under the age of five years
old
whereas in 2019 that dropped to 18
percent and then we are looking also at
the one related children to the
householder five to 17 years old drop
from 29 to 22
in 2019. um
again we we are very fortunate on the
fact that the university is here and and
that we keep bringing some of the of the
youth of southern new mexico and all the
united states to be to be completely
honest so it brings a lot of new
potential workers that can stay here in
the city of las cruces and continue to
grow our community and not the state of
new mexico doesn't have that overall
right we do have that that access
because of the university in itself
the key to this is how to keep them here
and with the current number of workers
that we have in the city of las cruces
how do we expedite the process so that
they can stay and work in las cruces in
a
easy manner and prevent them from
leaving
that's my portion for the workforce the
next one is housing
thank you dr payatis
good afternoon mr mayor members of
council natalie green with the housing
and neighborhood services
section of economic development
so i will be covering the housing
housing and neighborhood services uses a
census data
primarily it's used to determine our
cdbg and home allocations from our
formula grants but it also helps us
direct investment in particular for our
cdbg infrastructure so how we locate
investment for sidewalks and parks and
that we use cdbg funding for
it also helps us locate
different housing developments i'm going
to skip this slide and i'll come back
because i want to cover the next slide
first
i wanted to give you an overview of what
the households look like so
las cruces
based on the 2019 acs data and again as
dr baetis mentioned the new data comes
out in a couple days we have
approximately 21 000 households that are
owners
18 000 households are renters
there is a significant disparity between
the median income of owners or renters
you have almost a forty
thousand dollar difference or forty five
thousand dollar difference
renters on average make twenty two
thousand dollars per year and your
homeowners are making sixty six thousand
uh per year uh 62 percent of uh
homeowners are making over 50 000
um and then 24 of those are actually
making over a hundred thousand dollars
in contrast our renters uh 55 of them
make less than 25 000 and we have a
significant uh group of twenty percent
that make less than ten thousand dollars
um homeowners uh on average fifty five
percent are over the age of fifty five
and over so many of our renters again
are under the age of 35
and that could be because of the
university or it could just mean that
homeownership is is that much farther
for that age population
out of the housing stock in las cruces
homeownership housing stock 58 of that
is owned
those owners have mortgages and the
average
mortgage is about 1500
uh dollars so
we do have
some populations within las cruces that
they are cost burdened even though
they're
homeowners
for the rental side again the average
rent is 7.91 however rent for units
built after 2014 on average are about 13
51. so about 1300
and keep in mind that a lot of this was
pre-pandemic those numbers have
continued to rise post-pandemic
10 of our housing stock was built in the
last 10 years
for the homeowners that don't have a
mortgage
they their average monthly costs are
about 400
the medium sales price for homeownership
was about 165 000 and i have a different
slide for that
and then
again
the difference between 2019 and 2021 is
that all of those costs and data have
continued to rise we anticipate that we
will see that cost burden increase that
will see the need for multi-family
housing units to increase
so to touch on the change of pace we
just hope that our change of pace means
that we have the ability for everyone to
cross the finish line not just those
that can
afford
a certain
population and again for 2021 uh the
median price
is somewhere up at the end of 2021 was
242 000. i pulled it for february and it
has now increased to 260 000. so that's
your average median price home that's
for sale in las cruces
and again those days on the market
is seven days and we're just going to
continue to see that if we don't address
some of our housing issues
i will pass it on to your next presenter
thanks natalie
we're getting our money's worth out of
you today
good afternoon mayor members of city
council fire chief jason smith
i'll be presenting some of the
information from our fire department in
the census change
so here on this this table and chart
you'll see our call volume compared with
population the line
graph does show our call volume from
2010 to 2021. it increased on an average
of around 3 percent 3.49 actually year
over year
and there you have your population
numbers from 97 000 in 2010
up to 11
300 or so in 2021
some things that you'll see in the chart
there is a flat year between 19 and 20.
we attribute most of this to covet there
was kind of the reverse reaction of what
we expected when the pandemic started is
we actually received fewer 911 calls
than what we expected
people stopped seeking services for
their items and calling the 911 system
and even the hospital system saw some
decrease in census numbers early on in
the pandemic as people were afraid to
seek out medical help as you can tell in
2021 that rebounded very
very quickly there's also a drop in our
call volume in 2013.
the reason for this is we did change our
response matrix with our psap or our
local 9-1-1 system
we stopped responding actually
to mental health calls at that time
and that was just solely pd and the
ambulance service because having more
people on scene wasn't addressing the
issue as we just talked about you need
the right employees they're the right
people there to intervene
so those are the one of the changes the
other one was the fire alarm ordinance
that was put in place
so you have to register your alarm and
you have to pay for false alarms after a
certain number every year that actually
decrease the number of false alarms we
were receiving so those kind of explain
the anomalies there in that chart
as it pertains to response times in 2010
for all of our responses both code one
without lights and sirens in code three
uh full lights and sirens we're
averaging five minutes and 52 seconds uh
fast forward to last year our average
was eight minutes when you overlay that
with the population you can see our
response times grew at just about three
percent uh year over year and the
population at one point four
so to kind of illustrate this uh
chris petzl and gis helped us out with
this video
this shows
pretty much the population center of las
cruces in 1963 and it's going to fast
forward over time
to show everything that occurred
with growth so the first thing you'll
see is in 1967 right now we added
stations two and three
and i'm going to pause it right there
well you'll see in this chart the green
the dark green is our response times
through gis where we expect to be on
scene within a minute so it's drive time
on on clear streets stop signs green
lights
anything that is darker in color or i
should say brighter the bright red is 10
minutes
and anything as you see out here that's
up towards hacienda acres that's well
without 10 minutes from the the stations
so as we go through time we add stations
we add response crews you can see how
our response times improve throughout
the
city so we didn't have a lot of growth
between 1967 when we added stations two
and three until i believe around 1986
and that's when we added station four
and you'll see this area
here on the lower right that is all
yellow and red over a 10-minute response
time once we add station 4 that response
time is going to improve and that occurs
in 1986.
you can see here up into the northeast
part of town we have response times well
over 10 minutes
as we go through time a little bit
further we didn't add another station
until station 5 in 1990 and this area
previously that had well over a
10-minute response time is now mostly in
the green and yellow
i'll point out here and along the sonoma
ranch corridor those are all nine and
10-minute response times as well as
north elks north delray
and what is now north sonoma ranch near
red hawk metro verde metro park
our monte vista elementary school and
mesa middle
so the next station that we do add is
going to be station six north rise right
in this area now it all turns to green
and light yellow as our response times
improved
we go to 2000 we won't see another
station until station 7 is added in 2013
and that's going to cover the west mesa
and the airport
as you can see here our response times
are well over 10 minutes to the airport
and that was station 3 responding all
the way along i-10 up there to the
airport
as that station was added with a crew
our response times greatly improved in
that area
2018 you see the addition of station 8
at east mesa public safety complex
what was before all yellows and red is
now green with most of these expecting
somewhere between a six minute response
the area in red is along the the dam and
the ponding area obviously there's no
streets back there for us to drive a
drive on
and still that we've had station 8
here in the north end of town we still
have response times well over 10 minutes
and as these dots start to pop up you'll
see the amount of growth that larry was
mentioning earlier with the number of
permits and houses that were that were
built so please pay attention to to that
area as it continues to grow over the
next two years
2020 2021 you can see a
large increase in population and that
brings us to where we're at with today
with our current
stations located throughout the city
some areas that do have the long
response time that i want to focus on
and what that means with the census
so most of our funding for the fire
department when it comes to operations
is received from the state fire
marshal's office and that is based on
our iso classification now through years
and years of hard work from
chief zubia to chief brown chief
enriquez the las cruces fire department
now has the highest ranking you can have
in in iso we're a class one department
but as we continue to grow we have more
calls for service in areas where our
response times are very difficult
just this weekend there was a call over
here that experienced almost a 13-minute
response
and that is troubling for our iso rating
so if response times continue to take a
long time and we keep to having more
growth and more calls
our response times are going to continue
to increase and we do face a chance of
our iso classification
going down when that happens the funding
from the state farm marshal's office
also decreases
so some things that we can do to to
improve our iso rating is to look at
additional crews or or staffing which
we've done in numerous years in 2013 we
started our squad program so this was a
two-person unit that would respond to
low acuity calls
through through time it's actually
developed where
our squad units are usually the first
ones out now on most ems calls
we've added station eight we've added an
extra truck company at station one in
2006. and we added station seven in
2013.
so if we look at adding another station
in areas where we do have problematic
response times the north of town north
elks
somewhere along the south of maine
we do get additional funding from the
state fire marshal's office for that and
it'll also help us to maintain our iso
classification which gets us the most
amount of
funds allocated from the state farm
marshal's office
thank you
mr mayor
yes counselor may i ask the chief of
question
chief smith um can you go back to your
last slide
so um no not that one the one
the one that showed the response times
was
did you uh the map the map yes please
no there was another one that had a lot
of green there that one
so um
what fire station where exactly is a
fire station that services hacienda
acres
just yeah if your marker can indicate
where it is please
it's right there
so
the area that is um
to the left of that
um yeah just up a little bit the yellow
and orange where it's taking
a long time to get there and
and then impacting on the state marshals
funding
um why does it take so long to get there
it's not that far
mayor
councillor flores
it is that far ma'am from our closest
stations
station five and station six at
northride station five's at porter
so they have to leave the station and
then travel on the freeway and then
their best access is along sonoma ranch
so driving lights and sirens code three
following
you know regular rules of driving code
three it's a 13 to 15 minute response
time to that area from your current
locations is it because baton
west is a one way and it's hard to get
on the freeway and then you have to go
further to get back on the street you
really want is it is that a factor also
counselor floor is the the layout of the
streets does play into it but the main
thing is is the distance
it's it's just that far driving from
those stations that respond to that area
and then the more you um the longer it
takes you to get there
you're penalized by the funding source
right
by the statement
we're not penalized from them there's
the there's the chance that in the
future if our response times don't meet
iso standards we could uh face a
reduction in our classes okay reduction
so to me that's a penalty but i'm you
know i don't know football game rules
either so
and and i do want to be clear in 2020 we
we finally completed our iso review and
we were rated once again as a class one
so we've got a few years until uh we're
inspected again for our results great
thank you chief thank you mr mayor
mayor tem
thanks mayor thank you chief for it's
really great i love it
but my question along the lines of
counselor flores is
speaking to that one way
i have been asked
if we would consider moving right from
one way to two-way bring you know just
because of the flow of traffic is that a
possibility has um david sidio and
public works had those conversations and
if they have what would that look like
in terms of cost and time i see tony
here
okay good afternoon mayor councillor i
believe
you're the one okay cool um
no that uh
the the change in those frontier jobs
has not been no debt to my
um knowledge so that is an nmd dot right
away so that will have to be put forth
by nmdot to get that study that's an
nmdot conversation yes ma'am ah okay
we should have that conversation i think
as we grow
okay that's something that i like to see
happen i've i've been asked by numerous
people if that would ever be a
possibility
so yeah okay thank you
[Laughter]
mayor pro tem fire chief jason smith um
and one thing to to note
i believe here very soon the city is
finalizing
the donation of land
for the for the fire department for fire
station nine
uh that would be in the area of sonoma
ranch and angler
so construction and staffing of of that
station specifically will address
this high responsibility okay okay
that's good okay very good all right
donating donation of land by whom
did i hear that council floors i would
i'd probably turn that over to the city
manager's office uh either mr pealey or
mr enriquez
i think it may be too soon to mention
names i
don't yeah i think it's
public i mean we can we can talk about
mr moscato's uh
yeah
so mr moscato and his development as a
part of their development he's
donating a
piece of ground for for fire
just told him to it
i i didn't hear that part so where is
the land being the
possibility
mayor's uh sonoma ranch in engler
okay
so since i have you here so
i don't believe dona ana county has any
volunteer fire departments up in east
mesa do they
that you're aware of mayor members of
city council they have oregon volunteer
fire department and chief shannon cherry
i believe has been successful in getting
funding for staffing that that station
and obviously that is uh well to the
east and would not serve
that area
yeah i was just wondering if there was
any opportunities to work with with them
on donate county on on
not them staff in it but
being able to use it pay some rent or
whatever and and you know you the city
be there full time of course but then
also allow them because i'm not aware of
them having other than like you said
oregon and you would think that
that that's a pretty sprawling area also
in the county but i i don't know i mean
i know they have a lot on on other parts
of this the county but that one that's
one of their fastest growing areas so
just curious
mayor members of city council i
do believe once the county starts
staffing that organ oregon station some
opportunities exist for the city and our
two fire departments to look at
automatic aid agreements for certain
types of calls and serve that area
this section
right here that is gray is actually a
pocket of county area and those are some
of the opportunities where through
automatic aid
we can look at supporting each other and
providing a better service
and i won't i won't
ask what council wants to do but
that
i think in the future evil we maybe want
to have a work session
reach out to the county
and see if they want us to incorporate
that into the city because it when you
look at it it's really odd how it's
broken up and if we just close it in and
we make that the city and then um
you know we can we can build there
so
we'll just add to councillor
koran
your district
just have a little bit more work to do
yes council floats all right thank you
mr
and uh thank you again um chief smith so
um apropos of the county
um
are do they have fire stations and the
outlying areas
there's a there's a
what's the name of that
we have a station a fire station
near
off of
like i don't know the name of the
streets but
so whose service does does the county
have fire stations in those gray areas
mayor council floor is outside of the
city limits
that is the county response area
so if i can
maybe reduce
so the area that's city limits is the
dashed line along the outside
and as we've grown and at stations you
can see that we've filled in those areas
with our response times from our
dedicated fire stations outside of the
city limits is covered by dona ana
county or in some cases uh macia
since our township they have their own
volunteer fire department
as a sunland park even though they're in
the county they're their own city as
well so they have their own fire
department so do you ever get calls from
people who live in the county
occasionally we don't receive calls
directly from them other than customer
service questions burn permits
questions on building code that we
redirect them to we do get calls for
mutual aid to go and support the county
as well as there's been times where
we've called them to come and support
our operations
and is there a
reimbursement system or something for
that mutual aid or is it just an
unwritten policy or
no ma'am there's no reimbursement policy
for that we we go and support them in
operations and when we need them they
they reciprocate
okay thank you thank you chief smith
thank you mr mayor
yeah thank you
good afternoon deputy chief danes
um i'll be discussing the las cruces
police department i was asked
two things staffing and recruitment
okay
in our recruit
we are going to need to increase um our
staffing um much like the fire
department due to response times because
we are geographically just getting
larger even though maybe not in the show
we have people okay
um as the city grows geographically
we'll need more personnel to keep up to
keep our response times low we want to
keep our priorities
talk louder and into the microwaves i
don't know if i can lower it anymore sir
but i'll tell you i'm just kidding i'm
just kidding sir i'm just kidding
yeah i forgot to bring my stool i'm
sorry um
as as we go geographically we will need
more personnel to keep up with our
response times our goal right now is for
our priority one calls under five
minutes we are keeping those um in the
in the fours
and our for our priority two calls um
under eight minutes and we're just right
around on there now this is not um a
stolen cell phone or something like that
we're talking priority calls in progress
assaults things of that nature shootings
obviously too we're also going to be
dealing with more people coming into
this city just in general that don't
necessarily live here
as we are increasing events and tourism
um and with the and we don't know how
this is going to go but with the inc
with the legalization of cannabis we may
get a more influx of people coming
especially on weekends things of that
nature
you see this a lot in northern new
mexico like for example farmington
farmington doesn't actually have a
really large population but on the
weekends that's the only place you can
really go shopping so everybody comes
to farmington so we're kind of like that
in las cruces everybody from the county
most on the northern side of the county
comes to las cruces for shopping and and
things of that nature and if we do um
like our convention and tourism bureau's
doing a great job so they're bringing
more people so we'll be seeing more
people here that don't necessarily live
here so those census numbers may be a
little bit skewed
and of course this is going to require
more officers and support staff um
not just you know i'm not saying it's
bringing in crime but it's just like
you know are we going to need to shut
down more
streets for events films are coming in
things of that nature we will need more
officers and of course support staff
because the what we'll need is you know
you know records personnel maybe our
police service aids parking issues
things of that nature
also the type of calls we respond to are
becoming much more complex um
as you know in the earlier one with the
mental health calls you saw the 700
calls for service that we were taking
per month but also the type of calls
have become more complex so they require
more officer time
doing the good follow-up we need to do
for
you know burglaries are we getting
forensic data that we can actually
process obviously um
crimes that involve crimes against
persons are going to take up much more
officer's time
like dr paradis alluded to we do have
the university coming in so those types
of crimes are also a little bit
different
also
if we're going to be looking at the drug
issue
those aren't solved in a day so we've
got to put in some long-term issues
those types of crimes
so the type of calls we take even though
certain kind of calls we're gonna back
off of um as as as light wanted to go
forward there's still more stuff that we
can do to provide good
public service to
follow up and um solve those crimes get
some convictions and and make the the
public feelings uh here
we're also looking for more support
staff for certain kind of calls like
thank you very much you approved our
midterm budget for the police service
aides so some calls that don't
necessarily need a police officer but do
need police follow-up you know dusting
for prince taking a simple crash
that allows the officers to be more
proactive and in their neighborhoods
doing community policing things of that
nature so and community policing
actually takes a long time
so it's not just we show up hey how you
doing and leave you know that that takes
building relationships and it takes time
also recruiting um you know we are not
immune to what's going on in the rest of
the united states
law enforcement is having a hard time
recruiting so we are working to recruit
educated and diverse workforce um our
ethnic makeup actually reflects the
community very very well we're working
hard to recruit more females
obviously gender parity in a profession
like this and even dr peratas has slide
there's less women in the workforce for
a number of reasons
and it is i will admit it is tough if
you're a parent and a female
hey you got to work nights weekends and
and all your holidays and
so we also need to work to make it more
attractive for females and people in
general
we want to make it appealing profession
but it is tough when you are working
nights weekends holidays and we want you
to have a degree
when you can go work for google
so we we have to make it appealing we
want to appeal to those people with a
sense of of service
but
everybody else is trying to work to
appeal to those people as well so we are
working on that um we are offering uh
hiring bonuses for education and
military service um it has worked very
well for us in this last academy um
so we currently have 28 um
cadets in our academy scheduled to
graduate june 18th and i would say
70 percent of them have an associates or
higher many of them um have bachelor's
degrees so um that's not the be all end
all but it gives them a little different
perspective and that's what we're
looking for and um
very uh very diverse
as far as our ethnic background and we
have four females in the academy as well
so
um
so those hiring bonuses are what we can
control and for military service um the
current contract is currently being
negotiated um so obviously i can't speak
on that but
we hope to that that will be another
tool to keep the officers here and to
recruit more officers
also we are
currently hiring for the next academy so
please stay tuned pass it on to your
friends family
things of that nature so um
i can vouch it's a great career it's
done very well for me so
but that's where we're at so again we
want to keep up with the geographic
growth just like chief smith was talking
about it's going to take us longer
because it's it's we're growing and you
go out towards red hawk you go out
towards the east um even the west as you
as we want to bring in more business to
our business um
over there in the airport it's just it's
just farther it's got to take longer so
the old adage of you know x amount of
officers per uh so many people
population doesn't work we've got to
look at where we're going at
geographically the type of calls that
we're
going to be responding to and the
locations and what it's going to take to
provide the best possible customer
service
to those folks and so we can maintain a
safe community bring people here um you
know dr price is talking about look
where we're at our growth in certain
areas it's not so so great in others so
um
part of that our job is is to to keep
this a safe community so people want to
come here
i'm sorry stand for any questions
mr mayor
this counselor thank you i'm sorry for
interrupting your
reading your novel no i'm just kidding
um
thank you so much
battalion chief deputy chief danes
i'll get it right one of these years no
you keep going up i can't catch up with
you no worries anyway thank you so much
for your presentation um apropos of the
um
you said that uh people with associate
degrees are applying and so um do they
have a higher pay uh some um
someone applying with an uh with an aaa
associates or a bachelor's degree do
they get paid more because i know that
i've received um that you know questions
regarding that concern
mr mayor council florida city council
that is currently not um in the uh
collective bargaining agreement however
when they join we do have a hiring bonus
for certain levels of education
so that that's where it is right now and
also we do encourage
our personnel to take advantage of the
tuition reimbursement program through
the city as well okay so the and the
bonus is um that that is given for those
who get hired
right
and
um how much would that be do you know
mr mayor council florida city council it
really depends on the um
the type of education they have the
bonuses go anywhere from six thousand
dollars to twenty five thousand dollars
paid out
um
over approximately a year and they have
to have a three-year commitment to the
city
what happens if they
they can't keep that commitment do you
keep that money and trust or
um
they sign it they will return okay
all right thank you very much
counselor beta
thank you mayor thank you to deputy
chief danes um before when we saw the
mapping of calls for service and some of
those call times
are you having a similar trend as well
with
i know you mentioned red hawk but are
you
actually seeing a lot more even in like
downtowns when there's more going on
i'm just curious if your map would look
the same
mr mayor counselor
probably not
um it's going to look different from
time of day um
type of calls and some of the calls that
we would have longer response times to
are lower priority calls and so we will
we will try to push that to our online
reporting or through our civilian
reporting um but our priority calls um
are we're still keeping those under five
minutes so it really wouldn't be mapping
as the type of call it is and then the
call we were responding to um you know
so we will be running um code three
lights and sirens to to many of these
calls
and we also try to
maintain our staffing levels
geographically it is kind of hard um and
which we would love to see an increase
so we can have that and for example
i know this was a very long time ago but
20 years ago when i started
there was six officers per shift we had
the whole city um six
and that was a stacked heavy night so we
don't we're not that bad obviously now
but um the more officers that we can put
in different um geographical areas the
better to to actually be a deterrent um
you know it's not just responding to
calls but being proactive in the
community being in the neighborhoods
that's actually a deterrent as well so
we'd like to be able to do that instead
of just being response based
great thank you and i would be very
curious to see the type of mapping that
you do i think that helps us as well
make a better decision
yes counselor next time i'm sorry i will
we'll have a more interactive map for
you
man councilor graham
thank you mayor uh thank you so much dc
daines for what you've shared with us so
far
understanding the
challenges of recruitment how are we
doing with retention
of of the officers that we
have brought onto the force
mr mayor counselor graham city council
um
believe it or not i know a lot of people
hear a lot of things and they and they
use a lot of people they say a lot of
things
we're doing okay it's not great um you
know
people right now especially young people
um
i'm gonna date myself age myself a
little bit but you know i i took the job
you know knowing that i was going to
have you know a certain type of
retirement i wanted certain things um we
also need to realize that we're catering
to a different type of of of person and
what they want
so
you know
um
retirements and things of that nature
are not what a lot of people are looking
for not just in law enforcement i mean
look at the great resignation correct so
um
people are are leaving um for various
reasons they have to do what they think
is best for their family and themselves
i do not really think it's because of
the nature of police work um
mostly what we're saying is hey i have a
chance to be better off financially for
my family
or you know my brother's opening a bit
whatever something of that nature um
i think um
we do the best we can to to give the
officers the best equipment the best
training you know we're doing the
collective bargaining agreement um
but it it's it is a hard career to have
and so i think overall in general as as
we grow and and as as all um departments
move forward it's it is going to be
harder to keep people for a career
for what we used to think of the 20 30
years get your gold watch um but um
we are
we are seeing probably con consistent
people leaving um or staying or
we have some people taking leave of
absences so they can try something out
and then maybe that's not going to work
so
um their heart is all here but you know
there are other things
that they have to provide for as well
thank you so much
yeah absolutely and i think it behooves
all of us to think about that aspect as
well we tend to
trend toward recruitment but how do we
keep the good people we have
and and keep them with us long term
thank you so much thank you mayor
anybody else
okay thank you d.c danes thank you very
much
mr bartholomew
thank you mr mayor city council i'm mike
bartholomew i'm the transit
administrator for the city of las cruces
and i was going to focus my part of the
census impact on our funding uh we do
use some census data for some of our
especially our planning to make sure
we're the equity of our services but
that's just a piece of it we also use
the
acs the american community survey data
quite a bit for that however
in terms of our operating funding
we get anywhere from a third to 40
percent of our operating funding from
from
federal grants so i thought i would
focus on that
the last
federal transportation act was called
the fast act that was passed in 2015
and
it
was meant to go through september 2020.
it hasn't been reauthorized yet but
congress tends to to do continuing
resolutions to uh keep that going and
then adding
apportionments for it for that
continuing resolution
um
the
next version of the
transportation bill is pretty much tied
up in the larger infrastructure bills
that's in in congress right now
most of the funding that
public transit gets comes from the
mass transit account of the national
highway trust fund
the highway trust fund is
basically facing
issues with having enough funding to
keep funding all the transit hot roads
bridges and everything
because it's based on a fixed fuel tax
that hasn't changed in many years and at
the same time vehicles are getting more
efficient so there's not as much fuel
being consumed by by the vehicles that
fund the highway trust fund
so congress always
in recent years has to add more funding
to what would come from the transit
from the highway trust fund from the
mass transit account
after congress appropriates funding then
the federal transit administration
allocates the funding based on the
formula in the in the transportation
bill
census data is is probably the biggest
factor in factoring how much a
area gets for their estate or an urban
area gets for their uh
communities
there are other factors like ridership
that put into it that go into it but the
biggest ones are the population
we're
we get our money through a funding
source specifically for small urban
systems
or an urban system and it's called
section 5307 which i'll get into it but
our funding comes to las cruces based on
the population of our urbanized area
which includes las cruces and some of
the urbanized areas surrounding las
cruces
the census bureau is actually looking at
changing their formula for what defines
a uh urbanized area from one based on
the population density percent
census district uh to one based on the
number of residential units per cent
census district i don't think it's going
to be a huge factor for las cruces but
there are some
small urbans uh farmington is a good
example that's barely uh it's uh barely
at that
50 000 population that would make it a
small urban that it might change their
status as a as a small urban system
so to understand the allocation process
i was just going to go over the kinds of
formula fundings that we get formula
funding is really the big one that's
based on census
it's called section 5307 again large
urbanized areas have one pot of money a
large pot of that 5307 money in
new mexico albuquerque is a large
urbanized area and
parts of dona and otero county
surrounding el paso or in the el paso
urbanized area
there are four small urban areas
in new mexico las cruces santa fe
farmington and los lunas
are the small ones
through the section 5307 there's also
additional
funding for the small urbans it's called
small transit in intensive cities stick
just based on performance data so some
of the small urbans can get based on
how much they invest in transit or how
well their system is used they'll get a
little bit more funding through the 5307
program other formula funding are the
rural areas which is called section
5311.
rural funding goes to the state and
d.o.t and the state distributes it to
the to the rural areas
i meant to mention with the small
urbanized areas all those defined how
much we get by formula all the small
urban funding actually goes to dot and
they would they have the choice of
managing it or sub-alert what they call
sub-allocating the funds so we can apply
directly to fta and in new mexico that's
what they do we apply directly to fta
for our small urban funds
there's also some formula funds for some
capital projects in a program called
5339 that we get that's generally a
fairly small amount it goes to the state
as well and is uh distributed to the
small urban systems
so again the decennial census is the
major factor in how our funds are
distributed
other fta
funding formula programs that we don't
deal with directly in the transit
section is section 5303 is the
metropolitan planning funds those go to
states and fund like our messiah valley
mpo
we also got uh with the pandemic we got
some special funding
that was pretty much based uh
on our 5307 apportionments on how much
we got
initially we got in 2020 the the cares
act funding uh we got six million
dollars from karazhak that was a 100
funding didn't require any local match
there was a couple other
funding
areas one was had the nickname chrisa
and we weren't eligible for funds under
that program and then there was a
transit-specific arpa program
that we did
in 2021 get 166 000 for again all of
this is used for operating
and the last bullet says there was a
pending application for arp offending
for six million is actually six point
four million and we did learn a week and
a half ago that we were awarded that six
point four million dollars for our
operating and that will carry us uh for
a full year of operations
uh there's also discretionary funding
that gets appropriated to
uh for to fda that is not census-based
but it's generally for capital projects
like bus bus and bus facilities
whatever you
any kind of a facility for a bus and sub
programs under that section 5339 for
low and no emission vehicles
the usdot also has a program called
raise
which used to be called build which used
to be called tiger that's a funding
that's available for across the
the usdot so
rail airport highways
are all eligible to to
go after raise funds
and those fundings are very competitive
uh
always requests far exceed the amount of
funding that they get
and again that funding is not census
dependent
so what does the census mean for las
cruces in terms of funding population
growth can result in increased funding
under the under uh section
however it put the population is only
just a factor
congress appropriates a fixed amount of
money to the 5307 program so there's
only a limited pie to work with with all
of the eligible entities in 5307
so how
las cruces growth compares with the
growth in other small urban areas and
large urban areas that all
is a factor in how that pie is split up
and we don't know yet for sure exactly
how that's going to be split up but we
should know hopefully this month
the american public transit system
estimated that our combination formula
5307 and 5339 was going to be about 3.6
million dollars which was up almost a
million dollars from
fiscal year 21 and that's par in part
because they're just putting more money
into the pie not just because of our
population growth
i don't know for sure if we're going to
get that i wasn't quite sure
after looking at uh apta's numbers that
they weren't really
specific enough to that i couldn't match
up where they where they were getting
their figures from
we did get a partial apportionment in
our 5307 for this year of about 1.1
million that was basically additional
money that came in the infrastructure
bill that was passed last fall that
we're getting
what we what congress just passed this
last week with the omnimus omnibus bill
is is uh the remainder of the funding
that we're getting so they passed that
there's a
a pie of money and fta now is going to
be appropriating that so in the next
very few weeks hopefully before the end
of the month we'll see
how much we're anticipating on getting
in 5307 and 53.39
and with that i will take any questions
so any news on the um
possibility of
no fair bus rides you know just
remember we discussed that i don't know
if it was this year or last probably
last year
you know we don't bring in a whole lot
of revenue and
as it is i mean some what about a little
bit more than a hundred thousand but
was there any more thought about that or
uh the dilemma with the no the
the zero fare is is the is the dial
right side of it is that's a very
expensive service to operate and when
you take
a uh
not the dollar ride just the just the
button oh it has to be on both for 80 oh
yeah it can't be one it can't be
yet all or none yeah
so that's the dilemma with that one but
we're still looking at it we haven't
given up on it oh okay gotcha
okay
thank you
yes amy
lisa
good afternoon mayor council
my name is lisa larock i'm the
sustainability officer for the city of
las cruces
and i'm going to be talking about the
climate action plan in 2019 the council
adopted the climate action plan that
addresses greenhouse gas emissions
in the building sector
in energy transportation and waste
sector sector so even though this is
labeled a sustainability section
it really touches a lot of different
programs
and it also impacts everyone with
extreme heat wind drought flash floods
social disparities and stricter policies
impacts for everyone
how's that for a pick me up at the end
[Laughter]
so
we
committed to reducing our greenhouse gas
emissions by 19
under our 2018 baseline and discovered
that our population increased more than
we thought it would
we anticipated
that
the population would increase and with
that comes an increase in greenhouse gas
emissions
initially we had projected that the
greenhouse gas emission emissions would
be 19 above our 2018 level and then we
would have to reduce another 19
below our 2018 level
but with the nut with the increase in
population we saw even a larger increase
in our greenhouse gas emissions so we
had the 19 and then we got another 9
added to it so we have 28
above
the
uh 2018 base level plus we still have to
reduce below the 19
below the 2018
level by 19 so that adds up to a very
large amount
and
with that we did a i did a rough
estimate as to how much would cost to
address each percentage that we needed
to drop
for our commitment to the climate action
plan and just with a rough estimate of
20 million dollars
per per percent to decrease the
greenhouse gas emissions for the would
for the whole city this would be over um
a hundred thousand are
over um one million
over a lot of would be a lot of money
i'll stop there um
so the what i'm saying though is that
this requires that the municipalities
financial investment is anywhere from 10
to 25 percent because this is the cost
for the whole city to reduce its
greenhouse gas emissions and it would
require um a lot of us to invest in that
but more importantly it would require a
lot of policy changes that we need to
make towards this because
there's a big difference between whether
we're retrofitting or whether we're
doing new
new work the right the first time and
that can have a really big difference
and
but it doesn't negate the fact that
there's a lot of retrofits that we have
to do so being mindful and attacking
these as soon as we can is imperative to
being able to address this before it
gets out of
hand kate
rawhirt's donut economics redefines our
challenges for the 21st century
our challenge is to meet the needs of
all within the means of the planet and
to ensure that no one falls short on
life's essentials
while ensuring that collectively we now
overshoot the pressures on the earth's
life support systems
what we've historically
labeled as externalities before
needs to be factored and addressed head
on for us to make a difference otherwise
a lot of our problems will remain an
afterthought
it's imperative that every program
we do must require multi-solving we need
to use one investment to solve several
problems that were under that used to be
unaddressed externalities
so my
conclusion because i got to be the last
place
is that
i really implore that as we look at
growth we look at not
how
we look at how we
need to steward it not just how we need
to watch it grow
thank you
thank you lisa
you're working uh questions
sahil you're up for
you mayor city council secretary's
policy analyst uh that concludes the
presentation but we're still standing
here for any other further questions
that the city council may have from
from some of the other presenters if
they do have any additional questions
uh counselor ben cuomo and council
flores
thanks mayor thank you sergio and all of
staff who presented today and
ifo for putting this
very thorough presentation together i
apologize i i was waiting till the end
test questions for everybody um so
um some of you were gonna have to come
back up here
um
first of all i think that was a great
ending i think every everything we do we
have to consider
climate change as we grow and how we do
it in a smart way in a responsible way
so thank you lisa for wrapping us up
natalie i have just a question for you
around
i'll ask it well
you make your way up here
um you know dr palladis talked about
the median age and
um
and perhaps a lot of that is you know
new families
young professionals people getting into
the workforce people starting their
families for the first time
i'm curious if you can talk about the
barriers to homeownership you know be
aside from low wages
and if there's anything the city can do
to
help mitigate any of those barriers to
home ownership
uh mr mayor councillor bencomo that's a
tough question it's a good question
i think many of
the barriers are it really comes down to
supply and demand and i'll go back to
that chart really quick
where
our housing market had you know 800
homes available for sale in
2019 there's 300
and our ability to
even on the private side meet that
demand is is difficult our community
development staff does an excellent job
of
not only planning subdivisions
and considering those activities and
also expediting permits but
there really is only so much our local
workforce and our local developers are
able to do
staff
continues to
advise
both i think we talked about it a few
weeks ago about the land development
code and ways to increase
housing in that
you know by doing density bonuses
allowing accessory dwelling units so
community development's really
responsive in in proactively addressing
those
in terms of home ownership for families
a lot of it is going to come down to
our ability to
address some of those costs or reduce
those costs the way we do it now is we
help subsidize
habitat for humanity and terra del sol
we've we lower the land development
costs
whether through our impact fee waivers
or or direct reduction in the sales
price we had the privilege of taking
councillor koran and councillor graham
to a habitat for humanity house and so
we
as the city uh provided uh the funding
to purchase the property and then we
also subsidize those construction costs
so instead of that family having a
hundred and ninety thousand dollar
mortgage they're getting a seventy
thousand dollar mortgage and so they'll
be able to stay in that home
um
as long as possible or build wealth and
equity if they choose to sell that home
after the affordability period
so it's it's a balance between uh both
public and private partnership so
absolutely thanks natalie and i know
that you and i have been having
conversations about
also bringing the infill conversation to
the housing prc because
it goes to sustainability it goes to a
lot of things in terms of how we're
building and where we can focus
building housing uh
mr mayor councilman cuomo i think the
two things that i heard from our fire
and police definitely speaks to why we
should be investing in our infill and
why we should be increasing the density
in our infill because we're not moving
out geographically and we can bring
those services back into the core of our
city that infrastructure is already
there and it's much cheaper to
service those
areas and that's one of the reasons we
provide those impact view waivers
or reduced impact fee waivers for
affordable housing in well we do it
everywhere but we would want to
incentivize that in the infill area
specifically thank you so much natalie
those are my questions for you
um chief smith
oh sorry
i was in i don't want no no no i don't
want to interrupt i had a quick question
for natalie and i don't know
can i interject while we have natalie
i think it would be is that okay
is that work
thank you so much
natalie slide 24 if you wouldn't mind
going back
and i may
i may be misunderstanding this but i'm
looking at that second row substandard
housing lacking complete fleming or
plumbing or kitchen facilities
and seeing that a percentage of those
homes are being occupied by renters
i
need education here is it legal for a
landlord to rent out a home
lacking complete plumbing or kitchen
facilities mr mayor councillor
graham
the city of las cruces does not have
a uniform housing code that's one of the
things the housing prc and our legal
department has been working in fact it's
on the agenda for this week
it's possible to have a
residence that does not have a full
kitchen right we have dorm rooms that
maybe they use a hot plate or a
microwave and really that's a bowling
building code issue but it is possible
to have um it's definitely possible to
have substandard housing we get those
calls every single day about substandard
housing
thankfully it's fairly low in the city
but even low is not good enough so
okay but glad to hear that that
that i wasn't misunderstanding the chart
though sad to hear that i wasn't
misunderstanding the chart and i'm glad
to know that people are thinking about
it just thinking along the lines of
renters rights and empowering people to
know what's legal or illegal and how we
can help them advocate for themselves
thank you and thank you councillor
bencomo for yielding me some time
you're welcome
and yes thank you for bringing that up
we are working very hard um on this
housing code
thank you natalie
i'm chief smith
and yes you totally showed up dc danes
with the map now she's got to go back
and make a map
um chief i'm curious about
what is the process like for
a new fire station i mean is the funding
solely on the city
does the state chip in some like what
does that that seems like a really huge
deal that we just sort of like casually
talked about so i'm just i wanted to
follow up with you on that
um mayor councillor ben como members of
city council first the the map was was
done by chris petzl and gis so i really
want to give
him credit for for what he did kind of
talk to him very briefly and he he did
all that so thanks to him and uh
here he can borrow it anytime she wants
so the fire station uh construction i'll
walk you through
i've been involved with three of them
now and
each one had a different funding source
so
fire station 7 i believe was done
through bond cycling and i'd have to
check with uh either barbara de leon or
leanne if she remembers that but
when i first promoted the battalion
chief we were working on that station
and i believe it was through bond
cycling so we issued bonds paid for it
the city already owned land and we had
to go through
certain procedures with faa in the
airport at las cruces international
station 8 at east mesa public safety
complex
was funded through
bond cycling and also through the public
safety impact fee
so currently most of the monthly
payments for that come out of our impact
fee for public safety so that's one
funding source and then station three as
you know in your district counselor is
funded through the general obligation
bond
so three different funding sources we've
asked for funding through
legislative funding as well through the
icip cip process
so those are some of the areas that we
can receive funding for those when it
comes to constructing a station
for station seven eight and three we
went through the whole entire process
from conceptual design of square footage
that is needed what um
areas of the station and what their
purpose is so you go through that whole
mapping out this is how much space you
need and then you come up with the
design and it's a little bit of well i
want the station to flow this way or
that way or we want this type of
finishes and then a very bad word value
engineering
where your project gets shrunk to fit
the budget
um
so it just happens right but it's very
necessary and then construction and
obviously that's a year to two years is
what we've experienced thanks chief and
i guess i wasn't thinking of comparing
station three to this
because this is an entirely new service
area right so that feels different to me
um in thinking about comparing new
build out
um
how far in advance
do we need to but
potentially budget out
and consider funding sources
for a new fire station and an entirely
new
service area
mayor councilman cuomo i think if you're
talking about timeline of when do we
march this out like how far out do we
want to see the station built
it's probably
if you had the money in pocket today and
you said go probably two years best case
scenario until we're constructed
if we use say we use the station 3 plan
or station 7's plan we just
change it a little bit
maybe we could cut off some time from
that
just because the planning phase in my
experience the three stations it has
taken a year to do the planning
my recommendation if we're going to move
fast and we had a funding source it
would be to use
station 3 or station 7
change it a little bit to make it fit
the area and make it kind of a
cornerstone of what that development is
going to be
and then get going on construction as
soon as we can which
great thank you chief i appreciate you
bringing this up today
thank you and my last question is for
rob who i just saw walk in in terms of
redistricting
um
rob can you talk about
i'm sorry if i missed it i don't i
the timeline for when are redistricting
maps
need to be completed and then who do
they go to the state who has a final
approval on
council
maps
mayor councillor bin como
as far as the first question when
timeline when do they need to be done
when do we need to be done with
redistricting actually i'll go ahead and
pass that question to christine the city
clerk i apologize for that
christine when do we need to be done
with redistricting look at the local
level
mayor and councilman come on we we need
to get with the consultants first so we
haven't even met with them
so once we meet with them
because we just got the contract
recently signed so i have reached out to
them to see what the next process step
in the process is but i don't know if
jennifer has more information regarding
the state part of it
thank you mayor and council um the
requirement is that the redistricting be
reviewed every 10 years that's according
to our charter and state law we are
doing that so we're
so far in compliance with that
and then jennifer do you know then like
you know at the state level
the state legislature decides on the map
they go to the governor do ours
what's the process for local municipal
redistricting
mayor and council there is a state
statute that governs how
the city is to achieve that it does not
require i don't believe it requires any
state approval i can double check for
you and make sure i have that lined out
but we're able to according to our
charter as a home rule jurisdiction to
redistrict without state approval okay
thank you yeah does if you'd like
counselor i can give you a little bit of
input yes how we did it 10 years ago
so of course the next election is 2023
and so i think it's fair to say that we
need to be done by june yeah ready to go
because there could be candidates
starting to decide if they're going to
run for an office based on where it's at
and jennifer's correct in the past we've
never got the state approval we were
home rule and and we can
prove our own redistricting just
it just needs to be
what we feel is fair as far as a number
of constituents you know okay that's
primarily it okay that's helpful thank
you rob i guess neither of my questions
were for you
thanks thank you thanks mayor
okay so
sergio that would be it if that's all
the questions
all right well thank you very much for
all the presents oh i'm sorry councilor
flores i didn't see you
no
well i don't really have a question but
insofar as getting our fire stations and
stuff it's a good two to four years
because we get it through our gold bond
so
when we're
well that's how we got the last one
and that's probably the better way to go
and
in my humble opinion
and so it's a good idea apropos go bond
we're going to be having a lot of
meetings and this is the sort of
discussion that you can have with your
constituents
so that was just a
something to think about thank you
thank you councillor and i think there's
also a fund that is used to
[Music]
every building every commercial building
every apartment built there's a small
percent that goes to police and fire for
the infrastructure but i don't know what
the balance is on that
yeah
so
anything else
no that that will be all mayor okay
great thank you
so last is the infrastructure grant
opportunity applications
and amy basford will be discussing
thank you mayor
good afternoon good afternoon let me try
starting again good afternoon mayor
councillor amy johnson basford grants
manager
today we're going to talk um about some
of the infrastructure opportunities that
are coming available to us and two
particular applications that we're
pursuing at the moment
so as many of you know the bipartisan
infrastructure legislation or bill was
passed
mid 2021 it has multiple names some
people call it the infrastructure act
some people call it the infrastructure
improvements and jobs act
some people use many acronyms for
different things but bill seems to be
the one that
is
gaining the most momentum and traction
as being a continuous
name so it provided 1.2 trillion dollars
in infrastructure funding to provide be
provided over the next five years
starting in this fiscal year 2022
federal fiscal year
only about
567 billion is new money and i know that
uh is kind of an oxymoron because 576
billion is a lot of money and divided
over five years that's about a hundred
and twelve to 115 million a billion per
year
um but what that basically means is the
majority of the money in the 1.2
trillion dollars that was allocated is
been allocated to the normal kind of
funding opportunities that are put out
every year by congress so they went to
those programs that already provide
funding to communities throughout the
country and they've added this
567 billion dollars to help spur the
infrastructure programs they've done
some other things to help spur
infrastructure development as well
the majority of the funding all the
funding actually went to eight different
uh funding agencies that are already in
existence and those are the army corps
of engineers the department of
agriculture department of commerce
department of energy
the department of interior department of
transportation which is what we're going
to talk about primarily today the epa
and the fcc so those are all really
agencies that build things and that's
what the infrastructure act is about is
building things
the majority of the funds sixty percent
as you heard from mayor
chavez a couple weeks ago sixty percent
of them are going to programs that
provide allocations to agencies or
entities
for example mike talked about this
afternoon mike barthelum you talked
about fta providing additional funding
to the standard apportionment for
fta agencies to operate so that's one of
the ways that you're seeing where that
60 is being recognized it's going to
agencies that are already allocating out
money
40 percent of it is going to be truly
competitive funding
but that includes money that's already
annually budgeted for that competitive
funding and they're adding to that
competitive funding there are some new
programs that will be seen
that are based on trends that are
happening
around the country and that this
particular
administration would like to see
implemented so some of those trends
include that they're providing just
additional funding to existing programs
grant programs and we're seeing that in
a number of ways they're using new tools
that can help make it available to more
agencies more communities more
non-profits
depending on the type of opportunity it
is and so they're providing either a
reduced or no match
provisions if you meet certain criteria
they're providing larger projects
or funding amounts
that you can request
and they're having more funds to
distribute each year for the next five
years
some of the other trends that we're
seeing in the ones that have been
released recently are that they have to
get these federal fiscal year 22
opportunities out before summer so we
have about three more months before we
see almost all of the opportunities for
2022 coming out we've seen a couple come
out so far
we'll see many more in the next
month i would guess now that the
budget has passed the congress
and is on president biden's desk for
signature
but one of the other things that they're
requiring is that we have a submission
within 36 to 60 days from the
opportunity release
that's a very tight timeline for these
competitive grants that are generally
large
application processes that maybe require
a lot of technical information or
technical
subject matter experts to provide
information to you
they are also giving priorities
particularly this year for projects that
can get their funds under contract
before the end of 2022 which is the
calendar year 2022 so they are really
pushing to get this money on the street
as fast as possible
here are some other things that we're
seeing that are coming directly from the
biden administration that are in almost
every grant opportunity we're looking at
they want to look at projects that serve
the underserved the overburdened and the
disadvantaged populations
now those
terms are very familiar to all of us we
get they get used a lot
uh the way that we're going to use them
in these grant
guidance is by what the department that
is issuing the opportunity is deciding
is
the definitions of those
so today we're talking primarily about
department of transportation and
underserved refers to populations
sharing particular characteristics as
well as geographic communities that have
been system systematically denied a full
opportunity to participate in aspects of
economic social and civic life
overburdened is an epa term
and that's being used by the department
of transportation to describe minority
low-income tribal and indigenous
populations or communities
in the u.s that potentially experience a
disproportionate environmental harm or
risk
due to exposures or cumulative impacts
or greater vulnerability to
environmental hazards
so that's pretty specific on what
they're looking for for overburdened and
then the historically disadvantaged
communities are certain census tracts
tribal lands or territories the
procession or possession of the united
states
that follow the justice 40 initiative
whereas 40 percent of federal climate
investments go directly to front line
communities most affected by poverty and
pollution
those all sound really distressing but
the good news is that
on one hand the good news is that we do
qualify for many of those categories um
as we move forward to try and get away
from those categories so in this case it
really does somewhat help us
in each of the competitive grants
there's a requirement to demonstrate
during the planning and development of
projects the needs to address
environmental justice
racial equity sustainability and job
standards and those relate directly to
the actual activity that you're going to
be performing so environmental justice
talks about things like
development implementation enforcement
environmental laws regulations and
policies
racial equity relates for example for
d.o.t
racial equity and barriers to
opportunity including automobile
dependence as a form of a barrier or to
redress redress prior inequities or
barriers
sustainability relates a lot directly to
fiscally responsible land use and
transportation efficient designs the
increased use of lower carbon travel
modes
incorporating electric or zero emission
vehicles
those kind of things where they're very
specific to the type of project that
you're working on and then job standards
is in support of creation of good paying
jobs with free and fair choice to join a
union and the incorporation of strong
labor standards training and placement
programs so those kinds of things need
to be addressed in our development of
our projects unfortunately our city is
working to address many of those things
and so we have initiatives that we can
can speak to in our applications to say
that we are working towards them
but what are some of the strategies to
address some of the trends particularly
the timeliness of projects
one of the things that we're looking at
is what we utilize the projects that are
already approved by you on the cip the
capital improvement projects plan
we identify projects that are grant
ready and grant ready means that we have
a portion of the planning and design
already done so we are ready to go
within six months of receiving a grant
award
one that i looked at today said it had
to be within three months of receiving a
grant award so they are moving these
very very quickly which means that
things that are more visionary we need
to start planning for now and look to
apply in the future within the next five
years for
they align with already pre-approved
planning documents such as elevate
and the
city council's strategic plan
we need to look at match funds are they
available if they're available where are
they and
how much are they
we also want to consider the unknown
cost of a project which is something
that
we do often when we vet grant
opportunities and that talks about
things like in the application process
do we need to hire a specialized
consultant to prepare an analysis for
the application such as on our raise
grant that we're going to talk about we
had to hire a consultant to create a
benefit cost analysis it's a very
technical scientific process that has to
be done has to be developed and it's not
something that's within the capacity of
the staff to do
in the time frame that's allowed
how much time is required to
prepare the application and how many
different departments do we need
involved in it
some of the things that when you're in
the
project implementation implementation
aspect is what kind of costs are not
included in the grant project that we're
going to have to deal with
um acquisition of right-of-ways uh cost
of some of our analysis environmental
assessments
do we need a paleontologist on staff
during the process because we're
breaking new ground
what's the cost of making this grant
project a priority over some of our
other projects that the city is working
on
what is the cost of meeting all of the
federal regulations that we have to meet
when we're implementing federal funding
projects
and finally we need to look at what the
capacity is to implement given the other
projects that we are already working on
what is the capacity of our staff to
implement the project in the timelines
that are provided for in the opportunity
so those are things we think about those
are also strategies to ensure that the
project that we select is the best
project and most competitive project to
put forward for the opportunity
so the first one that we're going to
talk about today um is the bill the
raise grant which as mike mentioned
earlier used to be billed and before
that was tiger and probably before that
had a couple other names
but that's basically rebuilding american
infrastructure with sustainability and
equity
seems like every administration likes to
change the name of this particular
opportunity but it's an annual grant
opportunity for surface transportation
infrastructure
that has a significant local and
regional impact and that's very critical
to
the determination of what project we put
forward
the grant requests are are very large we
can go from 5 million to 25 million
for us we are bennett we have a benefit
in that no match is required if
any one of these four items or any of
the first three items are met we're in a
historically disadvantaged census track
and i'll get to that in a minute
we're in an area of persistent poverty
which we are
the poverty rate for the
dona ana county is 20.1 right now
20 is the marker that we have to be
above
over the past 30 years
this is an area of persistent poverty
over the past 30 years is what is
considered here during those past 30
years we've been as high as 29 percent
that we are a rural area as defined by
the opportunity and for this particular
opportunity they're allowing a rural
area to be considered anything with a
population under 200 000 which is great
because most of the time we don't meet
the real rural definition for many of
the other opportunities that are out
there but in this case we do
a historically disadvantaged census
tract are just our census tracts that
they have determined
are historically disadvantaged and our
project is in three of those
the project is in a total of four census
tracts three of those are disadvantaged
one of them is not
and we are able to take this designation
because the majority of our funds will
be spent in those three census tracts
and only a quarter of it will be spent
in the fourth it's pretty much an equal
division between the four census tracts
so we can say that the majority of our
funding will go towards being spent in
the three
disadvantaged census tracts
and then we get an additional benefit if
we're recognized as a designated
opportunity zone and census tract 102 is
a designated opportunity zone as defined
by hud
so what is the project i think all of
you will be happy to see that the
project is a partnership with nmdot on
improving infrastructure for road
improvements from solano to i-25 on u.s
highway 70 slash main street this will
incorporate sidewalks bike lanes and
access to multimodal transportation
it will include a replacement of the
bridge at the alameda arroyo
and it will include the addition of an
interchange flyover at elks and trevis
intersection
again no matches required because we met
many of the conditions that are required
by this
the application due date is actually
april 14th i think i was thinking of my
taxes when i wrote this it's not april
15th it's not tax day it's the day
before tax day
april 14th
the total project cost is right now
estimated at 44 million
nmdot has already um 17 million dollars
that we will use as leverage and that
includes the surface improvements and
bridge replacements from solano to i-25
and then the city portion that we'll be
requesting is 25 million that includes
design and construction of the else elks
travis interchange
the unmet amount is three million
dollars for row
acquisition right-of-way acquisition
this is a rough estimate because we are
not sure how much
acquisition is going to be required
and so that was not requested in the
grant application because we don't have
a definite number for it
this is the very exciting schematic
design of this and as you see this will
look very much like what we have at del
rey
where s ice highway 70 traffic will be
in the center and continue straight on
and then the
side traffic will come off of
us 70 main street and go on to
surface roads to connect to businesses
and across to each side of the
elks trevis intersection
so that's the raise grant
the next one that i want to talk about
is the airport terminal and tower
project this is a new competitive
program from faa
it's for the development of new or
rehabilitation of existing terminals and
error
port controlled i'm sorry airport owned
control towers
there's a total of one billion dollars
per year for the next five years that
will be awarded there is no maximum
grant amount a five percent match is
required this is potentially shared with
nmdot
aviation division
as we generally do with faa grants
so the release of this opportunity was
late february and it's due on march 28th
so we have two weeks left to get this
one done
we are looking at doing the airport
terminal
renovation of
8960 zia boulevard building the
construction of a tsa control building
the construction of a building between
eight ninety nine
eight eighty nine ninety sorry and
eighty nine sixty buildings
this would accommodate travelers for
both interest eight and inter state
passenger service as well as charters
and private aircraft and it will also
allow for the growth of ancillary
services at the terminal and we selected
this project because of the vision of
what we want to see at the la at the las
cruces international airport we see that
growing quite a bit over the next five
to ten years we're looking at these
buildings to accommodate that growth
over the next 15 to 20 years before a
full-size
terminal building would be required at
the airport this will come to you at
next week's council meeting because it
does require a five percent match we are
asking for 12.5 million dollars and we
will have a match of 650 000 so i will
be bringing this to council next week
for approval of that match request and
the approval to
submit the application
but i wanted to kind of bring this up as
one of our bill opportunities that we're
pursuing
other projects that are in development
based on the bill grant is a couple of
the things that mike mentioned earlier
the low no mission
buses this is due in may we are going to
purchase an additional seven electric
buses
the request will be about seven million
and require a 15 to 20 percent match
that's because the buses are actually at
a 15 percent but some of the ancillary
services that we need to request in the
grant are at a 20 match we will be
bringing that to you in early may so
that you can approve that match
bus and bus facility grant
we will be requesting an additional 4
million for the transit facility
and it does require a 20 match so we
will be also coming to you
in may to approve that match
fortunately we have identified sources
for both of those matches
so it's easy to move forward with them
and then finally one of the other ones
that's come out that does have some bill
money and it is from the department of
interior for the bureau of reclamation
and that is the small efficiency grant
which we have in the past received for
the smart controllers at the parts we've
received two of those grants
one of those will be coming to you in
early april for approval
and then
we've also received it for the utilities
department for the nodez
truck this year this time we will be
going for another utilities project the
bill money allowed them to increase the
grant amount to a hundred thousand they
did keep their uh match requirement at a
one-to-one match and that is due in late
april so we will be working on all of
those opportunities in the next month
and i stand for questions
thank you amy
councilor flotus
thank you mr mayor and thank you amy um
so um
if i understand this correctly um there
are different factors that the grantors
are looking at
and that's racial equity sustainability
job standards
and
and then there's the approach
that you mentioned
utilize projects approved on co all of
that right so
in applying in applying for this
for a particular grant for a particular
use
it seems to me that
the racial equity issue would so would
would it be in the area of
sustainability would it be in the area
of racial equity or are those factors
that have to be weighed in in granting
money to say well the airport so um if
you were to and then the buses and all
that so um
with um
do you
are all those factors
necessary to weigh in that are or are
they
do you need one factor do you need two
factors are they weighed and and how do
you substantiate that because
um
i mean you know we have our lisa's
report right now just said that our
our ghg just went up so high and that
was totally unexpected we thought it'd
be nine percent now it's going to be 28
and the other is um
the racial equity i mean the majority of
the people who live in las cruces are
quote hispanics
and um and i don't know what the measure
is for other you know the indigenous but
i mean but that's a large group right
there so
um and then the job standards part i
don't understand it doesn't matter but
so would you take say for example those
two
so that
the grant would be weighed more heavily
or how how does that work thank you
thank you mayor thank you councillor
flora that's a great question and i
expect that that will vary by the
agencies that are putting out these
opportunities what i've seen from the
department of transportation which are
the two we're working on right now which
is the raise grant and the airport grant
the faa grant
all of those are saying tell us what
you're doing towards these initiatives
so every one of them have to be
addressed now if they haven't gone to a
place where they feel it's sufficient
that you've involved your community in
the planning and development of the
project they will ask you to do more
work on that pending their award so they
may come back and say okay we're going
to give you this award but we didn't
feel that you did enough
environmental justice work in your
planning that you described in your
application so we need to see you do
some more of that before we give you the
grant
agreement
so they're saying yes address every
single one of these
and if you have done well enough that we
think it's a great project and we want
to fund you for it but you need to do a
little more work then we will
and so what i'm doing is utilizing a lot
of the work that we've already done that
lisa has done with her sustainability
and climate action plan work that we've
done with elevate work that we've done
throughout the city with other plans and
referring to those as well as ensuring
that when we're having our public input
meetings for various things at the
airport when consultants are meeting
with the community about the development
of a particular area
then i'm referring to that public input
and where did they have that did they
have it in the neighborhood did they
have it at the airport can we have some
in some of our other neighborhoods how
do we make sure that we're getting
the majority of the population that we
may be seeing as underserved or
disadvantaged having input right but
some of these deadlines are around the
corner so how are you going to do that
and i think that as you were presenting
i'm thinking well everything is in our
climate action plan everything's in
elevate and would that be a good uh
like a good uh resource or not a
reference reference absolutely thank you
mayor councillor flores absolutely i'll
be using uh references to all of those
for example on the raise grant which is
the elks tribes nmdot has done a number
of public input meetings already on that
project we'll be using that information
from those public input meetings
to direct some of the commentary about
why we're doing this project and then
we'll address
doing additional public meetings during
the design process of the remainder of
the project so on that particular
project is design and build
adding on to what nmdot is doing and so
during that design process those
designers will be required to do public
input meetings that give us more
direction on the
actual final design great thank you amy
and are there other applications that
you're looking at at this point uh yes
ma'am thank you mayor councillor flores
so we are looking at um some utilities
ones we're working we're going to be
working with the utilities department on
some that involve the wastewater
treatment plant
some of them that we look at some of our
water distribution lines some of the
natural gas lines that have an
opportunity to be
corrected or to be improved so that they
are maintained
so these bills are really looking at how
are you maintaining your existing
infrastructure how can you improve your
existing infrastructure and then what do
you need to move forward to serve your
population so for example on natural gas
lines we wouldn't be putting in new ones
we'd be improving the existing ones we
have so there's not leaks and there's
not
any kind of
breakage or that type of thing so well
apropos utilities and gas lines is there
anything that
you'd be applying for for the city to
have things go to for electrification
yes
mayor councillor flores those
opportunities haven't come out yet we're
expecting that a lot of the electrical
vehicle infrastructure will be coming
out from the state we think the majority
of the money will be going directly to
the state and then they'll be putting it
out as opportunities so we'll be looking
to expand the work we did with the
department of energy a couple years ago
where we put in seven or eight electric
vehicle
charging stations at our parks and other
city facilities we'll be looking to
expand that to add more electrical
vehicle charging there's some
opportunities for
electrical vehicle fleets so we'll be
looking at those opportunities
we're going to look at every single
opportunity we can that we can manage to
ensure we have enough match for and we
have the capacity to implement within
the specified time period so every
opportunity that's coming out we're
looking at wonderful thank you amy does
that include
any sort of
buildings or any i'm talking about
electrification electrifying
our
our future buildings and that sort of
stuff i mean is there anything
going on proactively in that regard
mayor councillor flores i am not sure if
they're going to be looking at solar
development for buildings certainly with
all of the buildings we're considering
building such as the transit facility
we're looking at solar as a component
but i don't know that there's going to
be specific opportunities to add solar
to our existing buildings but we would
certainly look at that if that's an
opportunity
thank you very much thank you amy and
thank you mayor
thank you council service
thank you mayor i feel so appropriate
that we're talking about this right now
amy after we just finished the
conversation about census because
it's a presentation where a bunch of
departments you know got to talk to us
and i feel like i saw how intertwined
we really are and sometimes we work in
silos frankly and
drop balls and all those kinds of things
right and i feel like
these funding opportunities are asking
you to really think about these four
pieces and embed them from the very
beginning because frankly often
racial equity and environmental justice
issues are sort of
after thoughts right that we still have
to put them into our proposals right and
i feel like this is really asking us to
like
embed them in from the proposal to the
end product right how are you thinking
about
um ensuring we you're bringing in people
now at the proposal stage that are
helping you think about these pieces
um
all these four pieces right thank you
mayor councillor ben como this is really
new this is from the the current
administration these are new things that
their initiatives that they want to see
accomplished so it is different for many
of us who are grant writers to have them
from the very beginning what opportunity
it gives us as a city is that because
this funding will be available for five
years if there's a project we really
want to consider
that we have not done all of the
planning for we can say okay let's get
this going from the beginning here now
and apply in two years
or imply in three years or one of the
great things is that they are allowing
you to reapply so if we don't get it
this year we could do some more work and
apply next year
there's one that came up just the other
day that it was like no we're nowhere
ready
to go this year but let's start thinking
about it for next year let's start
planning now and that was with natalie's
department with the choices neighborhood
we're not ready to meet the deadlines
that they have for this year but if we
start planning now we bring our partners
in we have our community meetings we
talk about these four areas of
importance then we would be ready to
apply at the next year and so sometimes
grant planning
is very reactive in that we have 30 days
to do it but in a lot of ways it can be
a long-term planning project for the
grants department and that and the
department or departments that will be
implementing it to say hey we're going
to join together and start doing this
planning now and be ready with a really
competitive project next year that's
excellent amy i'm really glad to hear
that and because
this is such a huge opportunity for us
right and i and i just feel like we have
such brilliant people at the city
including people like natalie and lisa
and
frankly the entire utilities department
but you know so like really pulling them
in from the very beginning stages to
make sure that we're hitting at all of
these pieces thank you
and then um i did pull up the i pulled
up the
fact sheet and it sort of looks like
there's about 25
competitive infrastructure funding
opportunities for local governments
so you just sort of answered that
question with council flores but they're
coming in at different times you're
saying that they're available
potentially even next year to reapply
right that's what that's going to look
like within the next five years yeah so
uh mayor councillor ben como that's a
great question
many of the agencies that are
implementing brand new programs have
never haven't done them they're not
ready they're not going to get their
nofa out for those that are just getting
additional money to their pro regular
programming they're ready to get them
out for the 22 fiscal year and they want
to spend that money in 22 because they
only have five years to get it out the
door
so they want to get it done they want to
give it to projects that are ready to go
off the ground
but there are some that are brand new
programs that we may not see until next
fall
but most of them that do have programs
ready to go will be pushing them out in
the next couple months so that they can
get them obligated by
the end of federal fiscal year 22
because just like us in the departments
if we don't spend all our money
you're not likely to give it to us next
year so they want to be
up there on capitol hill when the budget
process starts and saying we gave out
all of our money we gave out all our
money we need more money so
it's a similar budget process at the
federal level those agencies go in and
buy for the funding that's available
just like we buy for the funding that's
available here in the state buys for
funding that's available at the state
level so they want to say we've gotten
out our money we've uh we've said we've
awarded our money out and it'll be
obligated within 90 days and it'll be
under contract within six months so they
want to be able to make those
commitments to congress wow okay yeah
that's interesting
um and then you know i i know these
probably are not out yet but i see some
in here that are like safe streets and
roads for all which is a big
conversation we've been having here not
just on complete streets but
um the potential to repave a lot of our
really old infrastructure do you feel
like those opportunities
are coming they're out there is that
something we're going to be able to put
on our priority list
thank you mayor councillor ben cuomo
also a great
question we have hired a federal
lobbyist they are providing us with
daily
updates practically of new opportunities
that are coming out or what they're
hearing from the the hill about what's
coming out
and so that's a great resource that
city manager has provided to us
we are getting regular updates i think
we're on a webinar probably every other
day my myself and my staff are on
webinars about potential opportunities
coming out um some agencies are really
great and they're doing a lot of
proactive webinars other ones are like
oh okay it's due
at the end of march we'll have a webinar
three weeks before
so some of them are a little late coming
to the table but other ones are being
pretty proactive so it just depends on
how what the capacity of the agency is
that are getting all this money they've
had five and a half months to plan for
it so hopefully
they're they're going to do well with it
because they've been waiting this long
for the budget to pass
um and so yes we're looking at every
opportunity safe streets is certainly
one of those
working very closely with tony and his
department on what is the next high
priority project
or a project that's ready to go what's
on the design table that we don't have
money for
and this one elks travis was one of
those we're never going to the city's
never going to have the money to do that
on their own with d.o.t this is a great
opportunity to say hey let's go for this
money and let's see if we can get it so
that we can do this project the right
way the first time that's great amy i'm
so glad we have you thank you
um and speaking of d.o.t
do you foresee other partnerships for
some of these grants like the county or
the schools
yes ma'am
mayor councillor ben como yes so on
raise we are bringing in the county uh
the school system and nmsu to very
provide letters of support because it
impacts their particular populations
i think the school has four
schools that are within walking distance
of elks travis intersection
so we'll be reaching out to them the
county is being very receptive on
partnering on some of these and i could
see us doing some regional ones one that
we've just started talking about is
potentially a
recycling education program that we do
in partnership with the county
southwest central our south central
solid waste authority utilities and our
keep las cruces beautiful group so
that's that's four different
agencies basically within the city and
the county that we'd be partnering with
to go forward on this project and all of
us getting a little piece of the pie if
we receive the award that's great thank
you so much amy make sure you do some
self-care we don't want you burning out
the next five years thank you thank you
airport
thank you mayor thank you amy so much
for your presentation and all your work
i know how
difficult this is um things are flying
at you i know at a fast pace but i know
you're handling it slide 13
you made mention of
matches you've identified the match
or excuse me the source for the match
can you tell me i don't think i
heard the source can you please let me
know what those are thank you mayor um
mayor pro tem gandra so on the low
emissions um buses that is approximately
an 800 to 900 000 or i think it's a 1.1
million dollar match when we calculated
the other day
we will be looking for that from the
telstra fund because that is a where we
receive the match for the first five
buses so that will be coming to you as i
said in early may for a resolution
under the best and best facilities grant
last year
i think it was last year when we
recycled our infrastructure bond we put
five million dollars towards the transit
facility 1.9 million of that is not
currently obligated to a federal grant
we will utilize that obligation for that
okay um for the um airport just so you
that i mentioned that for the airport
terminal we did receive a five hundred
thousand dollar um
capital outlay
from senator soules we will be using
that for our match for this along with
what department of transportation
aviation division can provide excellent
okay thank you amy so with the for the
electric electric buses how many and how
many additional emission buses does that
or no emission buses sorry
does that include seven seven yes okay
so mayor count uh pro mayor pro tem
gandra that includes the seven
additional buses that are in our current
contract that we can um purchase under
the current agreement we have for the
five buses we have on order so we
ordered five buses under the contract
and we wrote into the contract the
ability to do seven more which gives us
a total of 12 electric buses which was
the original goal for electrifying the
fixed route it includes also the
charging systems that will be needed for
those
currently at the facility we're only
putting in charging systems for six
buses we'll have to add an additional
six charging systems as well as the cost
of the consultant to implement those
buses into the system and into the
routes and what times we charge at and
then the charging management um
infrastructure or software so that we're
charging at the lowest times of the day
and all of those kind of things when you
move from a few buses to a lot of buses
amy would you anticipate any issues in
purchasing those buses because i know
remember when we purchase the five
there's a significant amount of time it
is taken because they literally have to
produce them
so would you say given what you've said
that money needs to be used will we run
into any of those issues
um like we've had in the past and if so
what do you anticipate right great
question mayor
mayor pro tem gandra um the
the issue with the buses are fortunately
for fta they allow us to be considered
obligated when we bring in the grant
agreement and sign it and then when
we've done um a purchase order for it
so we put out the purchase order then it
takes two years to build it we have all
the buy america and the american-built
steel and all those kinds of regulations
we have to meet it does take two years
two to three years to build those buses
so those things are taken into
consideration but fta considers us
obligated when we've accepted the grant
and when we've issued a purchase order
so those two things can be done fairly
rapidly because we have an existing
contract we don't have to go out to bid
for those buses excellent so amy
in
to add to counselor bencomo's question
around um
coordinating with others write other
entities like lc
ps and the county i'm glad to hear that
there's a lot of commitment there to do
so
what if as we are looking at other
grants that and we're trying to identify
resources
could we partner with him as part of
that
you know do you have some money do you
do you know each additional group have
money to put into a pot i'm kind of
thinking about a fund that has recently
established at the state level for
higher ed right and all those funding
opportunities that go the wayside
because they don't have the funds the
matching
dollars so
would that be a possibility
if there is i'm sorry mayor uh mayor pro
tem gandra if there is um a shared
utility to the project and again these
are infrastructure so as we're doing
with nmdot they're basically putting up
what we would have normally put up as a
match we're using it as leverage because
we're not required to have a match
but so we're partnering with nmdot
because they already have 17 million
dollars we're going to come in with the
other money so that makes us a good
partnership if it has a shared utility
like that then absolutely we would reach
out to the county um even the state to
say you know can we partner with you uh
ev chargers may be that way if we can
put in some ev chargers that are on what
they've identified as electric charging
corridors
um that may be on city property we put
the city property forward they put
forward some of the money to put the
install in and together we get money for
the actual charger that type of thing so
absolutely we would be looking at those
partnerships and particularly using the
relationships that our departments have
with those entities because our
departments have great working
relationships with lots of entities
within the state and the county that um
a lot of times i i don't i'm not aware
of until i talk to them and then they go
yeah call such and such and they know
who it is to talk to at that entity and
then we can get the ball rolling it's
good okay thank you amy so much that
those are all my questions mayor thank
you thank you
okay well thank you for that uh amy is
there any questions from public george
three minutes please state your name
george pearson in the list of priorities
that you were looking at something that
wasn't mentioned was
safety and in the the bill
transportation department is looking at
preferring projects that would improve
safety conditions over capacity building
on its surface the suggested project for
the raise
is a capacity building
so i would recommend if you want to
continue
you're going to go ahead with that to
look at the safety aspects of that also
the current design
is kind of problematic for bike
trail bike paths for example there's not
enough right-of-way to do a proper bike
trail bike path
emphasizing that
i believe that this design would improve
that because there's some right-of-way
acquisition required
pedestrian access improvements lighting
improvements
all those safety improvements are some
things that should be emphasized
and looked at for not only this project
but all the other projects that might be
considered for transportation
in future years the raise
grant seems
tailor fit for the al paseo corridor
we've had all the previous planning
funding that we've gotten from federal
government
so maybe two years out or something
whatever as you're doing the al paseo
corridor development so
redesigning that and putting in the
ideas that have been done for
road diets and improving convectivity
alternate transportation connectivity
between
the university area and the downtown
area that would be a great thing to look
at thank you
thanks george yes mayor protest thank
you mayor thank you so much to george
for those comments i i really appreciate
it safety is paramount i know that in
our budget talks talking to mr trevino i
had brought up the idea of assessing the
city for hawk systems
um and i'm i'm i'm hopeful that that's
on the
on the list to do
um but i i when you said that that's
what george when you spoke to safety
that's what i'm thinking is
is those areas that have had an increase
in accidents fatalities
those are things i think we need to
consider as part of part of this and
i don't know
tony if you have any other feedback on
that
um crash data is definitely something
we're going to be looking at for us
for reason i know right
um for the upcoming projects as well as
the
areas and so forth so a lot of that
information staff is gathering right now
and we're trying to see how we're gonna
implement that and combine all that for
not just our grant projects but just our
own cip projects and how we're gonna get
that
implemented based on our complete
streaks
what about the assessments for the hawks
systems all over the city and not just
maybe you know a couple that we get
every now and again for the grants that
come available
are you you're um my my minute's up
you're putting a beep on me huh
a time limit they're timing me now i
don't know what time is it
mayor may pro tem gandala we looked at
that with staff and the difficult part
of that is where are we going to get
that study there's so many areas here
and for us to go get a consultant to
study every segment of major collector
arterial
has a heavy price tag for that so i
think
working with staff to see what areas we
may need this as well as some of these
upcoming areas for the um
our
focus areas for our upcoming cip of how
we're going to be doing stuff and kind
of utilize that so we can use that point
just where we're going to study for
these hawk systems to kind of get that
going but
we try to kind of look at it as from the
30 000 foot level we got to kind of
narrow down to see how we're going to
kind of
attack these areas and do those studies
at that time i appreciate that that
makes sense i appreciate that tony i
know there's some high price
you know you know it's a high ticket
item but i also think that we need to
really focus on that because of the
pedestrian fatalities that have just
have increased in the time that i've
been here and so um
i i say do the assessment and then bring
it to council and let us decide right
what what areas and how much that's
going to look like i think we need to
have just a general idea of what it
looks like so that we can start funding
those i think there is a a real appetite
for increased safety and reducing
pedestrian fatalities and accidents and
i think if those hawk systems and any
other
tool that we can utilize to reduce that
is is a great importance to me thank you
mayor thank you tony
thank you mayor mayor pro 10 let me just
mention on
this particular the raise grant so
over 80 percent of the area that will be
improved does not have sidewalks
currently so those will be added bike
lanes will be added as well
there will be access to multimodal
transportation
so to speak to some of george's concerns
i think almost every one of those we
discussed the other day with our
consultant
including increased lighting and
pedestrian safety going from the east
side to the west or the north side to
the south side of the elks travis
intersection
that safety will be improved with the
flyover and how pedestrians will move
and how they will connect to our
existing trail system as well so
all of those things are very important
to the rays
the things that i pointed out are the
new things in raise but there are eight
merit criterias in the raise grant and
safety is definitely one of them access
to multimodal transportation is another
so all of those things are some are
things that we need to address in our
application and our
consultant is working on making sure
those are taken into account in the
final design
okay actually i have a question probably
going to ask
chief dominguez or dc daines
regarding
the bicyclists and the pedestrians that
were had been injured or run over killed
whether or not they were wearing
reflective gear
you know i know the pedestrians that's a
little more difficult but the bicyclists
i think a lot of times they think that
that
since they can see us with the
headlights that we can see them a lot of
times
some i mean i remember on ospina
and bounce it's there's kind of dark
there and there's some people walking
and they're in the street and you know
until you ride on them and then they're
wearing dark clothing too so chief do
you know off top your head if if those
that were
injured either a bike or pedestrian had
some type of reflective
clothing on
mayor to answer your question
i don't i know that we do check to see
if there was reflectors and things of
safety equipment on the bike and each
one did have it
on their person i i don't have that
stuff for you
okay so they may have had some
reflectors but they but does does the
city require for bicycles
at night to have the the light and the
red red light in the back and the white
light in the front i mean i know they
have reflectors but
i mean there are some that i've seen
that are really good i mean you can see
them half a mile away and they're
blinking and you know that they're there
but
what is the you know what the apartment
is on that they're they're they're just
required to have reflectors they're not
required to have a light and we we
recommend it but they're not recorded
so
george sorry you have to come forward if
you want to speak
if they're driving on the side of the
road they have to have the little light
but if they're just driving on the
pathways sidewalks stuff they're not
required
all right thanks chief
i appreciate that you know that may be
something there that
i i mean there's i've had a few close
calls i'm really i mean they're there
and until you see them and i keep
thinking you know what we
we really need to start looking at that
because um i mean i know people don't
like to have be regulated but it's a
it's sometimes for their own good i mean
that
especially if you can't see them at
night you know you see bicyclists that
ride on the wrong side of the road they
don't have their lights on
and and
you know and
if you could prevent one death i think
it's worth it so something to think
about
okay
anything else amy no thank you for your
time today i appreciate it and uh look
forward to coming back to you very soon
with many other opportunities
okay thank you very much for that okay
so if there's nothing further entertain
a motion to adjourn so move to veda
second gandara motion but council beta
second by mayor potem gandera christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor abeda yes
councillor graham yes
counselor ben como yes
councillor koran yes
councillor flores yes councillor gandara
yes mayor yes okay we're adjourned it's
5 pm
thank you have a good evening
and whenever you're ready we'll do the
agenda setting
all right this is the agenda setting
meeting for our march 21 2022 city
council meeting number one non-consent
one non-consent two non-consent two
non-consent three non-consent
three three non-consent three
non-consent for non-consent for
non-consent five consent five consent
six consent six consent seven consent
seven consent eight non-consent eight
non-consensus nine non-consent nine
non-consent ten non-consent ten
non-conflicting eleven non-consent
eleventh sex thank you
you